The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame will enshrine nine new inductees — Kevin Cassese, Leigh Buck Friedman, A.J. Haugen, Alex Kahoe, Phyllis Kilgour, David Morrow, Ryan Powell, Denise Wescott and Tami Worley Kirby — in a ceremony Sept. 29 at The Grand Lodge in Hunt Valley, Md. Tickets are available for purchase until Sept. 21.

Phyllis Kilgour was getting out coaching when she dedicated Radnor High School’s 2010 Pennsylvania girls’ lacrosse state championship to Marge McCone, who first got her into lacrosse.

When Kilgour started teaching health and physical education at Radnor Junior High School, McCone took her under her wing and gave her some advice.

“She was a wonderful mentor for me in teaching,” Kilgour said. “She said, ‘If you’re going to be teaching here for a long time, you really need to learn lacrosse.’”

Kilgour had played field hockey, basketball and tennis at Lancaster McCaskey High School, then field hockey and tennis at Indiana University. She’d never played lacrosse. A Radnor middle schooler at the time, Sandy Walker, taught her to catch, throw and cradle.

“I’d go down to the gym in my apartment building or throw against the wall and work on my skills a little bit,” Kilgour said. “When I got halfway decent, Carole Kleinfelder asked me to come play on her club team. I was always a good runner, so that was pretty good. She had all these champions on her team like Jackie Pitts and all these U.S. players. I learned a lot of the game from them, and then I went to a lot of clinics. I learned from a lot of different people. I had tremendous mentors.”

Kilgour went on to become one of the most decorated high school girls’ lacrosse coaches in history, winning eight state titles and 574 games at Radnor, where she produced 30 All-Americans. Now she will join Kleinfelder, Pitts and the other women’s lacrosse greats when she’s enshrined into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame on Sept. 29 at The Grand Lodge in Hunt Valley, Md.

Before Kilgour coached lacrosse, she had to be a student of the game. She studied her club teammates, watched high school games while starting out coaching junior high, and took in college games. In 1981, after coaching with McCone at the junior high level, Kilgour took over as head coach of the Radnor program. She inherited a team that had gone 0-12 the previous year.

“I knew that we had great athletes, because I had coached them in junior high, and I knew they could do better than 0-12,” Kilgour said. “My goal was just to be .500 initially and try to improve the program. In the first year, we were even over .500, so that was a pleasant surprise. Once they bought into my discipline and things I wanted to do and the team concept, we just got better and better.”

Radnor won its first district championship under Kilgour in 1986. By the time Kilgour retired in 2010, they had earned seven District I championships and won back-to-back state titles in the first two years that Pennsylvania sanctioned the sport. Kilgour went 574-75-7 in 32 seasons at Radnor while building it into a powerhouse.

“I don’t want to say there was a fear factor, but teams feared going against Radnor,” said Kim Jackson, a friend and rival coach at West Chester Henderson. “They knew it would be a tough contest. I don’t remember her being outcoached.”

Jackson will be Kilgour’s presenter when at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

“I was shocked,” Kilgour said of the honor. “I just wasn’t thinking about it. It came as a very nice surprise.”

Kilgour changed the culture of Radnor’s program. She may have been tough, but she said she was fair.

“I had to set up some hard and fast rules for everybody, and I didn’t listen to anybody’s excuses,” Kilgour said. “The rules were just the same for everybody, no matter what. Once they learned that, we didn’t have any problems.”

The discipline made a difference on the field. It also helped that her teams were so well drilled. She had an arsenal of plays, and her team ran them well.

“After my first couple of championships, I started running a more set offense,” Kilgour said. “I ran a lot of plays. We probably had about 40 plays. We practiced them a lot. I used to get kidded about the plays, but the plays pulled us out of a lot of difficult times.

“I was always looking for a new play. I was always watching college warmups, and I got a lot of plays from that. Eventually I asked some of the guys’ coaches and got a couple plays from them. It kind of evolved.”

Kilgour credits her assistant coaches — from Mary Ellen Kelly, who started with Kilgour, to Brooke Fritz, who took over for Kilgour when she retired — for their contributions. Kilgour also coached Radnor’s top-notch field hockey program, and she had coached tennis, swimming and basketball early in her career. Her success and longevity in lacrosse surprised her.

“I thought maybe I could help out the program,” Kilgour said. “Marge was the one that kind of guilted me. I thought my coaching career was over when they asked me to coach lacrosse. I thought, ‘I’ll just get them back on their feet.’ My sister is the one that said, ‘You know if you do it, you’re in for the long haul.’ I guess she knew my personality better than I did.”

Kilgour spent four decades building and then sustaining one of the very best programs in Pennsylvania, and still values the camaraderie and friendships that came from of it.

“There was a pride to wear that Radnor uniform and be a part of that dynasty,” Jackson said. “She established such a strong and winning tradition it hasn’t faltered. That does come back to her and what she established.”