For today’s Teacher Feature, we talked to Mr. Keegan Phillips: History teacher, rap connoisseur, and renowned first base coach.
Q: What is your favorite student slang, and can you use it in a sentence?
A: There’s a lot of student slang that I unfortunately have encountered over the past three years, but I’ll go with the safest option for an interview, which is probably drip. Mr. Phillips, you have nice or horrible drip today would probably be what I would call the best slang.
Q: What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?
A: The best concert I’ve ever been to was in Toronto, where I got to see Drake perform. And Rihanna gave the best performance because they were dating at the time. Yeah, I would have probably had to go with that.
Q: What are your thoughts on the Drake and Kendrick beef?
A: I think they did it for publicity. And my insider prediction is that Kendrick Lamar will invite him to perform at the Super Bowl in February.
Q: What’s the one album you listened to that changed your life after the first time you heard it?
A: I don’t know if it changed my life, but probably what got me into listening to rap music was The Eminem Show, which came out in 2002. That’s probably my favorite album of his.
Q: What is your fattest moment?
A: Probably when I was in college at Allegheny, up in Meadville, there was this dollar taco night that we would always go to, and it was basically as many as you can eat. We would routinely eat over 20 so probably those times on Tuesdays.
Q: What’s the best advice you give your younger self?
A: I would probably say to interact with more people. Sometimes I kind of close myself off, and I think it’s important because you can learn something from everybody that you meet. The more people you expose yourself to from different walks of life, they can give you something to take with you. I think especially in college when I had people from all over the world, I think we had all people from all 50 states. I could have put myself out there more. I kind of stuck with my baseball group for the most part.
Q: What’s your ideal last meal?
A: My last meal would probably be a large pepperoni pizza followed by 20 wings. And, I’ll finish it off with an ice cream sundae. I’ve eaten quite a lot in my day, but I keep it simple. I think too many people will go with the steak and mashed potatoes approach. No, I’ll take a pepperoni pizza, 20 to 25 wings, ice cream sundae. Finish it off in style and salute on the way out.
Q: What’s the first car you ever had?
A: The first car I ever drove was a hand-me-down 2011 Honda, CRV, light blue. That thing is still chugging along somewhere. The car I drive now, I have used 2013 Kia Sorento. And it almost exploded when I was driving to a Cleveland Cavaliers game about two years ago. But it was, it turns out to be an engine recall. So I got a new engine for free because of that. But, you know, scary moment. But, other than that, it’s chugging along right now.
Q: What’s your favorite pizza place in the Pittsburgh area?
A: I’ll give two recommendations. I go to Alta Via in Shady Side. That’s a pretty good place. I also like Mineo’s and Aielo’s, they’re right next to each other. They have the rivalry, but I prefer Mineo’s. That’s a pretty good pie.
Q: Free night by yourself. No grading, No girlfriend, what are you doing?
A: Well, I’m throwing on the horrendous Pittsburgh Pirates. Hopefully, Paul Skenes is starting that night. But, I’m probably ordering a nice little dinner and watching Pittsburgh sports, preferably the Pirates. If it’s a Sunday, obviously the Steelers, but if there’s no Pittsburgh sports on, I’m sure there’s some sort of national broadcast for a major League Baseball game. If it’s in kind of like those dog days of summer, then I would probably go play some sort of pickup sport. Recently I’ve been taking up pickleball. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I am becoming a master.
Q: What is your best story of catching a student cheating?
A: If I’m giving an essay or a short answer response, I run it through AI, just because you never know when you’re going to catch a student sleeping. This student happened to have a paper that said it was 100% AI generated and it included words that this student had no business using. So, I wrote down the words that I thought they would never use, and I asked them to define them in a sentence for me or just write the definition, and they were unable to give me a definition for the five words. I then said, “you have three days to make up this or you will be getting a zero.” The student took their zero and that was that.
Q: What is your best high school or college athletic memory?
A: Probably going to the WPIAL championship and playing at the Petersen Events Center. I was the only junior starter on a team of seniors. We unfortunately lost in the finals. Second, I’ll give a silver medal for college. It would probably be because Allegheny baseball played, they now are in the PAC, which is basically all Pennsylvania schools. But they used to be in the NCAA, and we were in an all Ohio conference. And we had three teams that were nationally ranked in the top 25. So we were in a tough conference, but the conference tournament took four of the ten teams that were in it. So my junior year, we finally made it to the conference tournament. We were the third seed, and the other two teams in front of us were in the top ten in the country. So it was kind of a big moment, college wise, when we got there. We didn’t get too go far. We went to Ohio for the tournament, but it was still a good experience.
Q: What is your best celebration story after a big win as a player or a coach?
A: Best celebration is probably after we clinched the WPIAL because obviously in high school, adult beverages are prohibited. Of course, forbidden. Illegal. But in college, we did the champagne shower that you see on TV with the MLB teams once we clinched the conference tournament. So I will always remember that because we did it in our one buddy’s apartment. So he was stuck with the clean up because he forgot to put some towels up on the walls beforehand. That was a slight miscalculation.
