MARIANNE STANLEY : Old Dominion’s Young Coach Is a Big Winner

Marianne Stanley hadn’t even considered coaching women’s basketball until she was a junior at Pennsylvania’s Immaculata College in 1975. Three years later, as the 23-year-old head coach at Old Dominion University, she led the Lady Monarchs to a 30-4 record and the championship in the National Women’s Invitational. The next two years, 1979 and ‘80, she won national championships in the now defunct Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, her teams finishing with 35-1 and 37-1 records. Now in her eighth year at Old Dominion, Stanley has the top winning percentage among active coaches, male or female, in Division I basketball. She has a 219-30 record (an .880 percentage) following Old Dominion’s 52-48 victory over USC Friday.

But folks, we’re not talking about the John Wooden or Ray Meyer of women’s college basketball here. At 5-6 and with the pudgy-faced looks of a Girl Scout selling cookies at your door, Stanley hardly has the distinguished appearance one tends to associate with a coach with such lofty status. Nobody tosses around words such as venerable or revered in describing the 30-year-old Stanley. Compared to most coaches, she’s just a kid. Although Stanley may not look the part of the nation’s most successful coach, however, she sure knows how to play it. She has won more in eight years than most people win in a lifetime. She’s at it again this year. Old Dominion, the country’s most dominant women’s team during the last decade, is 14-0 and ranked No. 1. Success has been a constant in Stanley’s life. She starred at Archbishop Pendergast High School in Philadelphia and went on to become a two-time All-American at Immaculata. She played in four national championship games during college and helped her school win two AIAW titles. In her only coaching experience before getting the job at Old Dominion, Stanley, as an assistant under Cathy Rush, helped Immaculata to the 1977 national championship game, which the Mighty Macs lost. About her only major setback in life has been a failed marriage. She married Rich Stanley, her high school sweetheart, in her junior season at Immaculata, gave birth to a child, Michelle, during her senior year, and was divorced by the time she reached Old Dominion. Stanley, however, prefers not to talk about her personal life. Asked how difficult it was being a single parent, considering the demands of coaching, Stanley replied, “I don’t really want to talk about my personal life, just about basketball.” There was an incident in 1980 in which Stanley, who has a reputation for toughness in the Tidewater area, chased an unarmed intruder from her Norfolk home. “I’m not gonna talk about that,” she said. After discussing various aspects of the basketball program, the topic turned to Pam Parsons, the coach Stanley succeeded at Old Dominion in 1977. Parsons moved on to South Carolina, then resigned in 1981 just before a Sports Illustrated article exposed her homosexual involvement with players. Stanley said: “No comment on the Parsons article,” and added, “Don’t ask me about my family and child and all that, OK? We’re done.” End of interview. There have been other similar moments at Old Dominion. Despite her success, or perhaps because of it, Stanley is a controversial figure. In 1977, she took over a team that already had All-American Nancy Lieberman and future All-American Inge Nissen. Some folks around here said that anyone could have coached the Lady Monarchs--that Stanley won her championships with Parsons’ talent. There were others who credited Jerry Busone, former assistant coach, with being the brains behind the operation during the championship years. Busone is now the women’s coach at the University of Hawaii. Stanley has weathered the criticism. “At first, I was sensitive to it, because I obviously didn’t have anything to do with Nancy Lieberman’s ability or Inge Nissen’s ability,” Stanley said. “I’m not gonna take credit for that. But I think I demonstrated early that I had a knack for being successful, and that’s invaluable as a leader. “Some people said I was there baby-sitting those teams, and that hurt, because I wanted to at least be acknowledged for having worked hard and done my share. Anyone who made those kind of statements was on the outside and didn’t have a good idea of what was going on day to day.”

Stanley said conditions at Old Dominion were “fairly chaotic” when she arrived in 1977. There had been disagreements between Athletic Director Jim Jarrett and Parsons about the direction of the program, and Parsons was said to have had a less-than-cordial relationship with her players, particularly Lieberman. “The change was not a smooth, clean break,” Stanley said. “It was obviously difficult to coach kids who weren’t my players. I didn’t recruit them, so I think there were some loyalties elsewhere. But it didn’t take them long to feel comfortable with me. “I came in and realized that I had to establish myself and my philosophy as a coach. I wanted to be successful, and so did the players, and we went about it in a very aggressive, business-like manner. I’m the type who rolls up her sleeves and gets right to work.” Growing up and playing basketball in Upper Darby, a suburb of Philadelphia, Stanley’s game was heavily influenced by the work ethic. She was known as a heady, aggressive player, a tough little point guard who always led her team in floor burns. They couldn’t keep Stanley out of the lineup. She gave birth to her daughter on Oct. 24 of her senior year and was working out with the Immaculata team a week later. As a player, she had experienced it all--playing in the inner-city, playing in high school and college, and playing under the pressure of national championship games. But this coaching was an entirely different scene. “What I knew, I knew well, but there were a lot of aspects about coaching that I wasn’t aware of,” Stanley said. “My first two years were on-the-job training in many respects. Every game was a learning experience. I sat there, and the whole game was like reading a textbook.” With Lieberman, two-time Wade Trophy winner, and Nissen on the floor, Stanley didn’t have to do that much coaching. Just sit back and be entertained. “A number of different people could have come in here and been successful,” Stanley admitted. “I only take partial credit for our success. I was real fortunate to get this job. “Timing isn’t everything, but it has a lot to do with everything. And you have to be lucky. You have to get the right breaks. But luck will never take us to a national championship, either. This school puts its resources in the right places for us to have a successful basketball program.” It was important for Stanley to make the most of the school’s commitment to women’s basketball. She went after the best players, and with the school’s winning reputation, the good players also sought her. But she dribbled out of bounds while recruiting a player in 1979. She was caught visiting the home of an athlete, a violation of AIAW rules, and the AIAW slapped a two-year probation on Old Dominion, specifying that no university funds could be used for recruiting. That didn’t stop Stanley. For two years, she and her staff recruited at their own expense and landed such players as Janet Karvonen, a forward from New York Mills, Minn., and Janet Davis, a center from Alta Loma who eventually transferred after two seasons to Cal State Long Beach. Stanley never regretted her mistake. “I was wrong, but I did the right thing in that situation,” she said. “I had the opportunity to recruit a girl who didn’t have the best family situation--her parents were separated and she was going back and forth between them--and it was important for me to know what I was getting. “If I’m going to invest this university’s $20,000 over four years and put in my time and effort, I better know who and what I’m getting.” The probation didn’t really affect Stanley’s program. Good players continued coming to Old Dominion, and the Lady Monarchs continued winning. About three years ago, however, Stanley realized that she wasn’t fully satisfied with her coaching. She had always been extremely intense, in practice and in games, but now she wondered if this was the right way to go about it. “My personality is very intense, and I really work hard at what I do,” Stanley said. “It’s a certain mentality of my background that I had been trying to apply to my kids. “But maybe I was trying to push that too hard. If someone doesn’t learn the same things I’ve learned in my institutional setting, then you have to allow room for differences. “I was being frustrated in that I wanted to be successful, but I didn’t want to be a taskmaster. People were misinterpreting my intensity. I was yearning for good, open lines of communication where I was being understood and vice versa. “You have 15 different personalities on a team. The way I operate may not be the way they do, so for it to work, you have to have good understanding and cooperation between people.” Stanley found a solution. Every year, for the last three seasons, she has taken her team on weekend retreats to work on group dynamics. Usually, they rent a place at a nearby beach before the season, then follow up on those sessions during the year. “We learn about body language, how to communicate effectively and to understand people’s feelings, and how not to project your feelings on someone else,” Stanley said. “Throughout a six-month season, with all the attention and intensity, demands on your time and schoolwork, people run the gamut of possible problems. “It’s real important that if someone’s having a bad day, you don’t think she’s being lazy or selfish. It’s translating for me into good business and personnel management.” The players see the results, too. Said Medina Dixon, star forward on this year’s team, “It really helps us avoid some problems. We talk about how people act in different situations, put those all together and see how we can deal with each other without getting hurt. I’ve learned how sensitive some people on our team are, and I’ve learned to be less of a critic when it comes to things, because I know how my teammates feel. I’ve adjusted my ways.” So has Stanley, who apparently has matured a lot since her arrival as a bright-eyed, 23-year-old. Dixon said that her first impression of Stanley, when she saw her on television in 1979, was that she was a mean coach. Now, Dixon said, “She’s real nice, even pretty calm during the games.” Stanley is no longer the tyrant who used to storm the sidelines from buzzer to buzzer. And after eight years in Virginia, her tough, Philly accent has given way to a slight southern drawl. But one thing has remained the same. She’s a winner.