Theresa Grentz and Marianne Stanley: From Delco to Immaculata to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

Marianne Stanley knew there was more out there. She could see it right across from her rowhouse in Upper Darby, just down the hill from West Chester Pike … those courts on Golf Road filled up with basketball players. When would they let her play? All day and often into the night, the games carried on.

“Right outside my house, there was a streetlight,” Stanley said. “Enough light to see.”

She figured out that you don’t get in if you don’t get out there.

“Who’s picking the little 5-foot girl?” said Stanley, who then was Marianne Crawford. “I’m the only girl. You go often enough, people see you. You do all the things the guys don’t want to do. Diving on the court. Who’s getting the loose ball? Be the biggest pest, up their butt.”

Basketball was her sport, done her way.

“It grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go,” Stanley said.

A couple of towns away, over in Glenolden — “the neighborhood was all boys. There were, like, two girls,” said Theresa Grentz.

Except going to the nearby playground courts “was a little taboo” for a girl in her neighborhood, Grentz said, so Theresa came up with her own solution. The boys came to her.

“We played out back,” said Grentz, then Theresa Shank. “My father put a court up.”

It was a driveway behind the line of rowhouses, a typical narrow alley, a place to learn how to operate in close quarters.

“We talked to the neighbors, to see if we could use his parking space so the pole could be in the middle,” Grentz said. “My father put up lights. To be honest, my parents got a little bit of [heat] for their daughter being out back all the time. They supported me. I never really ventured out.”

The neighborhood boys who showed up quickly saw that this girl wouldn’t back down.

“The only guy who had a problem was the guy who wasn’t chosen,” Grentz said.

So this is a Philly story, and a Delco story, in addition to being a tale that helped change basketball nationwide. Two women who played at the archest of rival high schools — Shank at Cardinal O’Hara, Crawford at Archbishop Prendergast. They joined forces at Immaculata, where Shank was national player of the year, and Crawford eventually showed up to play point guard, keeping the national title run going for the Mighty Macs.

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The influence of these two women carried on. After a year as an Immaculata assistant, Stanley took over as head coach at Old Dominion. She coached Hall of Famers such as Nancy Lieberman and Anne Donovan, Old Dominion the new power, winning national titles in 1979 and ‘80. That little streak was broken in 1981 by Louisiana Tech, but the Delco-to-Immaculata connection came back in 1982 when Rutgers won the AIAW title, coached by Grentz. Their careers carried on through highest highs and some deep valleys, but hits highest ground on Saturday when Grentz and Stanley are inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

“Me and Marianne end up on the biggest stage in basketball,” Grentz, now 70, living outside West Chester, said the other day.

The biggest stage, the same year.

“The story is so stinking unbelievable,” Grentz said.

More than a half-century later, the hoop is gone from that alley in Glenolden.

“The telephone wires are still there,” Grentz said when she was sent a photo of her driveway. “There is a silver wire that runs down the wall and the end of the single window was the basket. The telephone company had a fit with us because we were constantly separating the phone wires. … I couldn’t begin to tell you how many hours I spent in that driveway.”

At the end of the block, there is a school across the street.

“We had GAC on Thursday nights,” Grentz said. “Girls Athletic Corp. The mothers ran the sessions. Gymnastics for fourth and fifth grades. Volleyball for sixth-graders. Basketball for seventh- and eighth-graders. I would stay after in the sixth grade and shoot with the volleyball.”

The mother of her paperboy suggested to the other mothers, “They might want to take a second look at this Shank girl and move her up to the basketball group … now. And they did.”

Grentz remembers it all because she’s still married to that paperboy, Karl, who grew up two blocks away.

Moving indoors to play CYO ball was a trial, she said.

“I was a disaster,” Grentz said. “I didn’t know you wore shorts. I had long pants. I didn’t know. I played outside. I had to learn. You didn’t have your parents taking you to open gyms. It was a search-and-find process.”

Against the boys, “I never really was a force,” she said. “As the guys got older, they got stronger. I still played with them each day. But when I played against girls, that was easy for me. They used to get upset with me. I was used to passing with the guys. It was a strong pass, let’s put it that way.”

She was a force at O’Hara. And Prendie was the big rival. Grentz remembers the time her sister was listening to the radio — “I think it was WIBG” — and there was a request “from the girls from Prendie for Terry Shank and the O’Hara Lionettes.”

The song requested, a Tokens ‘60s hit: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

It was the night before Prendie vs. O’Hara.

“I will tell you, the Lion didn’t sleep the next day,” Grentz said.

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Confidence gained across the street, Marianne ventured farther. There were better games just past the SEPTA high speed line by her house, down the road past Cobbs Creek golf course, at Rose Playground.

“I would get a good game,” Stanley said, still looking to play the same way, not in high school yet. Some alert type would say, “I’m picking her.”

Some guys on the other team would start laughing.

“OK, watch.”

She became a student of the game. Hal Greer was her favorite for the 76ers. Bill Melchionni caught her eye when he was at Villanova. She watched Wali Jones closely, not even knowing the ‘Nova and Sixers guard had played high school ball at Overbrook. Stanley would look over at that school on the hill; she knew that’s where Wilt Chamberlain had gone. She didn’t have to see far to understand the places basketball could take you.

There’s no exact this is where I saw her first moment between Stanley and Grentz. Just an awareness of the other in high school, followed by joining together in college.

“When I got there, they had just won a championship,” Stanley said of getting to Immaculata, after first stopping at West Chester for a few days, before she decided she didn’t want to be a teacher. “I recruited myself pretty much,” Stanley said of joining Immaculata. “I was able to get minutes right away. I think my skill set blended in.”

Of Grentz, Stanley said, “She was the best. I always said, I could throw it anywhere in her ZIP code and she would catch it and finish it. She was such a skilled player, not just for her position.”

“She was a fierce player, she really was,” Grentz said of Stanley. “She gave us something we really needed.”

“There’s something, the Philly point guard — I very much was affected by that style and that mentality,” Stanley said. “I never really was that good of a shooter. I was above average at best. It was all the other stuff, the glue stuff, that keeps you on the court.”

Recruiting back then? Grentz laughed hard.

“That is funny,” Grentz said, recalling how she was committed to go away to school — Mount St. Mary’s was her choice — until a big fire at her house convinced her she shouldn’t move that far from her family.

“I went to the financial office all day — it was constantly closed,” she said of her trip to Immaculata, which had been her mother’s first choice all along.

Basketball? Did they even have a team out there in Chester County?

“The sophomore class had a cotillion, the decorations had caught fire — there was no gym,” Grentz said of her arrival. “Well, they had this little tiny gym. It wasn’t even a gym. It was a room that had a basket. The ceiling was so low.”

Pro tip: If you want a movie made about your team, have some nuns around. The whole story — so stinking unbelievable.

The Mighty Macs are in the Hall of Fame as a team. Coach Cathy Rush was inducted as a coach. This year, Stanley goes in as a coach. The veterans committee voted Grentz in as a player, pretty appropriate since she was first-team all-American three straight years and national player of the year as a senior back in the days when she there was no pro ball to move on to.

Grentz went back to Delaware County, to teach at Our Lady of Fatima, when St. Joseph’s called, surprising her with a job offer.

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After getting that Hawks program up and running just a year after a varsity team had been formed, Grentz moved on to Rutgers, becoming the first full-time women’s college coach in the country.

It was an honor, and it was a battle.

“They’re giving scholarships — they’re giving two; I needed three,” Grentz said of starting out at Rutgers. “They could have given us 12 scholarships. They gave me two.”

She got tired of hearing the phrase, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” She got tired of asking, “What kind of mood is he in?” before walking in to see an athletic director.

Grentz thinks back to growing up with the guys, how that was helpful to her. She knew when to press, when to accept what was given.

“All the decision-makers were men,” Grentz said.

She ticks off the names of a lot of men who helped along the way, doesn’t want to make it seem like it was her against the world. Down the road, Pete Carril was coaching the Princeton men. Grentz watched his offense on television — “I just couldn’t get the end. Finally, I called him one day.”

Maybe they could meet?

“Let’s do it tomorrow for breakfast,” she remembers Carril saying. “He showed me everything. He gave the actual videotapes, including the Georgetown [NCAA Tournament] game. ‘Just get them back to me. … Also, don’t tell your men’s coach.’ We ran that offense against Tennessee. They were No. 1. We were unranked. January 18, middle of a snowstorm. We beat them.”

The highest high was winning that 1982 national title, but Rutgers kept winning under Grentz, reaching the NCAA Tournament nine straight seasons, dominating the Atlantic 10. Grentz, who had coached the U.S. women to Olympic bronze in 1992, moved on to Illinois in 1995, beating Rutgers to the Big Ten by a couple of decades. Her early years were the most successful, with four straight NCAA appearances. Her last coaching stint was two tough years at Lafayette, from 2015-17.

Regrets, she’s had a few. But the sum total equals Hall of Fame.

“I think that everybody has that window — you have that time to do what you’re supposed to do,” Grentz said, remembering a famous Mark Twain quote: “The two most important days are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

When people want to call her a pioneer, Grentz looks behind …

“People played before us,” Grentz said. “We might not know their names.”

For all of Stanley’s wins, maybe the most meaningful battle of her career has to go down as a loss.

Stanley played in the first nationally televised game for Immaculata, and in the first women’s basketball game at Madison Square Garden, both in 1975. Those were Immaculata highlights, in addition to playing in four straight national title games, winning the first two, losing the last two to Delta State.

Her coaching tenure rose even higher, with three national titles during her 11 years at Old Dominion, a WNBA coach of the year award in 2002, when she was in charge of the Washington Mystics, a 2019 WNBA title when Stanley later was an assistant with the Mystics. (Most recently, she was let go as head coach of the struggling Indiana Fever, less than three seasons into her latest WNBA head-coaching stint.)

Stanley, now 68, also had head-coaching stints at Penn (1987-89), an interim season at Stanford when Tara VanDerveer coached the Olympic team, and four seasons at California.

But it was her years at Southern Cal that Stanley knows were as consequential as any of her time.

“I’ve been at the top of the mountains and the deepest part of the valley,” Stanley said.

She was referring, she made clear, to USC as the valley, despite a successful run coaching the Lisa Leslie-led Trojans from 1989-93. She also recruited future Hall of Famer Tina Thompson to USC.

“I got let go at USC because I had the audacity to say I deserved equal pay for equal work,” Stanley said.

In fact, USC made it to the NCAA Tournament in her last three seasons, reaching the second round, the Elite Eight, then the Sweet 16. During her four years in charge of the women, the USC men’s team reached the NCAA Tournament twice, reaching the second round once.

“I felt a little like Ginger Rogers — I’m doing it backwards, in heels, with less resources,” Stanley said. “And it was expected, not just win — it was stated, you’ve got to win championships.”

Her $8 million lawsuit after her firing lost on appeal, but Stanley still believes this was a fight she had to fight.

In her mind, she was fired “for suggesting that Title IX is a real thing, not just words on a paper,” said Stanley, who now lives in Raleigh, N.C. “I had to prove to the court that damage was done. Somewhere in a box, I’ve still got over 100 rejection letters, including some men’s jobs I applied for.”

She also lost her role as U.S. Olympic team assistant, since at the time, she said, the rule was you had to be a head coach. VanDerveer threw her a big lifeline, giving her a job at Stanford, before she took over at Cal.

She’s had interesting side ventures, including a month working with the Chinese national team. More recently, the WNBA offered a chance to work with the top players in the world.

“How do you find that extra 5 or 10 percent?” Stanley said of working with elite players. “You’re climbing Mount Everest, and you’re already 80 percent of the way up. The steepest part is just ahead, and it’s incremental.”

Both Stanley and Grentz shook their heads at the whole journey as they separately reminisced about where it started, in the same familiar territory.

“Two teammates from the same championship team going in [the Hall of Fame] the same year,” Grentz said.

“What are the chances?” Stanley said. “This might be like getting the Powerball numbers right.”

Maybe a longer shot. Somebody eventually gets those numbers. This has happened once before, in 1960, the second year of inductions, when a Purdue guard named John Wooden went in with Boilermakers teammate Charles Murphy. Here we are again, a mere 62 years later.

“And two women did it,” Grentz said.

Two women who learned the game toiling hours outdoors in Delaware County, sensing possibilities from the start. There was always more out there.