Phil Anastasia Retiring After 40 Years Covering Local Sports

Longtime local sports writer Phil Anastasia is calling it a career:

Saturday night’s state final was my last assignment for the Inquirer. As of today, I am retired. Thanks to the players, coaches, administrators, front-office folks, media-support people and readers who provided so much help to me over the years. I’ve been beyond lucky. – 30 –

— Philip Anastasia (@PhilAnastasia) November 30, 2020

Anastasia was most recently a high school sports machine for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He covered everything local, from St. Joe’s Prep to Camden hoops and everything in between. He’d been with the Inky since 2008, though his experience covering Philadelphia sports both amateur and professional goes way back to 1980, when he first joined The Courier-Post.

Phil is a Rowan grad who also taught a sports journalism class there. I really like this quote from a story the campus newspaper wrote about him a few years ago:

“I covered the pro stuff for years and I like the innocence of high school sports, the kids are fun to deal with,” Anastasia said. “They appreciate the coverage and I just feel like people in general are reminded of when they were younger. It feels a bit nostalgic for a lot of people to follow their old high school to see how it’s doing.”

Amen. Doing high school sports is fun, lots of good stories to tell and people are generally excited to see the media, which isn’t always the case these days..

Anyway, Phil is a really nice guy. You won’t hear anybody in this market say a bad thing about him. Congrats on a great journalism career.

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