The Legendarium: A Monarchy In Virginia, Part 1
No Cap Space WBB's 'Legends of March' historical series begins with one of the original mid-major powerhouses and how Old Dominion came to be synonymous with success.
Marianne Stanley stood on the sideline in an arena in Greensboro, watching time tick away. Seconds fell off the clock and the realness of the moment crept in. She looked over to the broadcasters’ table and spotted her former head coach, Cathy Rush, on the call and transfixed on the action as her protege’s Old Dominion team led Louisiana Tech with mere moments left in the game.
But Stanley had her eyes glued to Rush, her mentor and entry-point into women’s college basketball. This championship performance was an homage to her, the woman that helped build Marianne into what she would soon become. As the final buzzer sounded and ODU became AIAW national champions, a new era was born.
The Reign of the Monarchs had begun.
Selective Excellence
Marianne’s path started in Philadelphia, an incubator for some of the brightest minds in the game, from herself to Cathy Rush to Muffet McGraw and Geno Auriemma. But once she finished her playing career at Immaculata, where she won three national titles, she was curious about what to do next.
“I was an assistant at Immaculata for just one year,” Marianne remembers. “I played on four national championship teams. So my pedigree was such that if you’re trying to build a program, I think I know a lot of what it takes.”
Which is how she caught the eye of Dr. Jim Jarrett. Few individuals in the country had the foresight of the Old Dominion Athletic Director, who took over the position in 1970. At that time, ODU was playing Division II sports and Title IX had not yet been implemented at the federal level. While Marianne was still playing college basketball, Jarrett was positioning his department to make the jump to Division I. Absent a football program, he had to think creatively to get students and alums excited about the school and its’ teams. So he came up with a tagline and strategy that would prove to be foundational and rather ingenious for the time.
“Selective excellence”.
Jarrett identified smaller sports that didn’t carry a massive audience but had the opportunity to be dominated by a school like Old Dominion. At the time, the Monarchs men’s basketball program was rapidly ascending but he didn’t stop there.
While other athletic directors saw the introduction of women’s sports — and basketball, in particular — as a possible hindrance, Jarrett was a visionary in his desire to invest in it. The Monarchs had a functional program as early as 1969 and entered the AIAW in 1972 when Title IX was passed. In 1974, Old Dominion held a fundraiser game to get scholarships for their female athletes. In fact, it was young woman by the name of Wendy Larry that would become the first women’s basketball player at ODU to receive a full athletic scholarship.
From 1972 to 1974, ODU had become something of a revolving door for women’s basketball coaches. Mary Jackson, the first coach of the program, had left and her successor Debbie Wilson — not to be confused with the Debbie Wilson that coached at Ohio State at the same time — stayed for just a season. So Jarrett found Pam Parsons, a unique and ultimately complex individual, to try and lay the groundwork for making the program successful.
It was during Parsons’ time in Norfolk that two players joined the team: a 6’5 Danish teenager named Inge Nissen and a 5’10 New Yorker named Nancy Lieberman, who, alongside Ann Meyers at UCLA, became one of the first true superstars in women’s basketball.
“I had never really seen girls play like the guys,” Nancy remembers. “The first time I ever saw it was Immaculata and Queens College, playing in Madison Square Garden. That was the first time, watching Debbie Mason or watching Marianne going ‘I want to do that one day. I want to play in the Garden.’”
Nancy was raised in Far Rockaway, a neighborhood in Queens, New York. By now, her childhood story is well documented and a case study in the lengths young girls had to go to achieve their athletic dreams. Her mother initially wasn’t supportive of her desire to play basketball, so young Nancy would steal a dollar or two out of her mother’s wallet and take the A Train all the way up to Harlem and Rucker Park.
The blacktop court of Rucker was, at that time, becoming an epicenter for New York’s streetball scene and the wider basketball culture. Initially, Nancy’s nickname up in Harlem was ‘fire’ because of the color of her hair and the intensity with which she played.
At 17, she made the United States Olympic team and took the trip to Mexico City to compete in the 1976 games. Predictably, every college program in America that had a semi-decent women’s basketball team wanted her to play for them after that. But, for a brief moment, Lieberman was close to never playing college basketball at all.
“[French women’s basketball club] Clermont-Ferrand — this is probably an NCAA or AIAW violation — flew me and my family friend, Lynn, to France and I played and worked out for them,” Nancy remembers. “After to or three days of me playing and trying out, I decided ‘you know what? I don’t know if I’m ready to play in France and be a pro.’”
But before she left, she had a cup of coffee with one of Clermont’s players, Inge Nissen. The 6’5, a couple years Nancy’s senior, was thinking about going to school at Old Dominion and suggested the two go together. So the tandem headed down to Virginia and decided they were going to build a legacy for themselves.
Their freshman year, the Monarchs made it to the NWIT semifinals before Parsons left to take the head coaching job at South Carolina. Some rumors suggested it was over a squabble regarding investment in ODU’s program. But the reality was somewhat darker. The very same controversy that ended Parsons’ career at South Carolina — inappropriate relationships and dynamics with her players — allegedly had been a pattern dating back to her time at ODU.
“I told Dr. Jarrett — it was the middle of the night — and I was like ‘I’m leaving’”, says Nancy. “I took everything out of my locker and he called the family that I was close to [at Old Dominion] and they came down and met me and I said, ‘I’m not going through this with her.’”
Parsons departed to Columbia, where she was the subject of an explosive Sports Illustrated story alleging her recruitment and relationship with an at-the-time underaged player who would eventually play for the Gamecocks. Parsons sued the magazine for libel but was found later to have committed perjury on the stand and was sentenced to three years in jail.
In the the meantime, Jarrett was back to the drawing board for the third time in five years. He had to hire a winner if he was going to be able to build ODU women’s basketball into the perennial power he wanted them to be. So Jim Jarrett hopped on I-95 and headed up to Philadelphia.
Building a Monarchy
“There used to be a Marriott hotel that was right there at the junction of City Line Ave [in Philadelphia] and [Interstate] 476 and [Dr. Jarrett] called and wanted to meet with me,” says Marianne. “That’s sort of an iconic place for Philadelphians and I really didn’t know what to expect. Long story short, he wanted to offer me a job.”
So Marianne Stanley, at the age of 23 and a year removed from playing basketball, packed up her things and headed down to Norfolk to become a collegiate head coach. Much like her mentor, Cathy Rush had done, she would be trying to mold players that were just a few years younger than her. And on top of that, she had to build a staff for the first time ever. Fortunately, Rush had been running basketball camps in Philadelphia that became something of a hot bed to identify great talent and network with some of the best coaches in the area.
In the gym one day in 1977, Marianne met a young assistant named Jerry Busone. Jerry was a high school coach who was mentored by a Philadelphia prep legend, Don Bassett, and had started to find his own success helping build programs in the area. At Rush’s camp, Busone and Stanley got to chatting.
“I was in the process of looking at a men's job at Brown or Rhode Island and Cathy and Marianne asked me if I'd be interested in being Marianne’s assistant at Old Dominion,” he recalls. “And I said, ‘Great, tell me more about it.’ Marianne said she her goal was to win a national championship, and that, in my mind…that is all I needed.”
Within a few days, Jerry packed up his car and made the drive down I-95 towards Virginia. Boxes and knick-knacks were packed to the windows as he stepped on the gas and hit the highway. Before he stuck the key in the ignition, he looked at a piece of cardboard he had affixed to the dash with two words written on it.
“National Champions”, it read.
In spite of some of her more problematic impulses, Parsons did do one thing before leaving ODU: she left Stanley and Busone two budding superstars in Inge Nissen and Nancy Lieberman.
“[Inge], to this day, to me, was one of the most impactful players I’ve ever been around,” Marianne says. “She’s the prototype of every foreign player who has ever come over here and played in the U.S., that played in that stretch four, stretch five [role].”
The roster was augmented by some talented underclassmen in Angela Cotman and Rhonda Rompola while experienced contributors like Jan Trombly and Sue Brown gave opponents plenty to deal with.
And then there was Nancy, who was already something of a superstar and whose mind for self promotion was helping put the school — and the sport — on the map.
“She is a one woman self marketer,” says Debbie Harmison-White, the team’s longtime Sports Information Director.
“Nancy was a silent killer,” Jan adds. “She set the standard.”
What also helped was a unique figure within the program, Debbie Harmison-White, the team’s Sports Information Director, who joined the team in 1979. While Nancy was a force unto herself and Marianne was adept at selling a program to fans in the way Cathy Rush did at Immaculata, Debbie was as good a saleswoman as any. At that time, the job of team marketing professionals was less about restricting access to the press but instead inviting them to see as much as possible to grow the sport.
“The [local] NBC affiliate in particular, at that time, sent out a lot of clips of Nancy playing,” Debbie says, “And that ended up in having Al McGuire come down with his show he used to do on NBC, and shooting hoops with Nancy and doing a one on one with her.”
“[That]resulted in the Virginian-Pilot, which is still the newspaper there, sending articles out that got picked up nationally and Sports Illustrated came and did a whole big piece on her twice. I took the girls to the Today Show and Good Morning America that year.”
White managed to cajole media members into covering the team more often, creating elaborate media guides printed in color — a novelty in women’s college sports at the time — and making sure that butts were in the seats in Norfolk. Spurred on by Dr. Jarrett, who was seeing his vision of selective excellence in women’s basketball begin to take shape, the program began its’ ascent.
In 1978, the Monarchs opened the season by beating Lynette Woodard’s Kansas Jayhawks then topping longtime power Delta State. In January, they blew out defending national champion UCLA 90-60 and players started to believe in their championship potential. They knew they were good but just how good was being recalibrated on the fly.
Soon, they found themselves in the AIAW Final Four in Greensboro, playing in a national championship game against a program that would become their mid-major rival for the next three decades: Louisiana Tech.
“They had tremendous talent,” Nancy remembers. “I was pissed that we played them in Madison Square Garden and we lost by like a point or two. I played like crap and I was very disappointed.”
That spring, they had another shot and this time for some legitimate stakes and history on the line. The Monarchs went into the halftime locker room down and Nancy began having a mental discussion with herself.
“I’m like ‘Nancy, you’ve done this,’” she says. “‘You’ve played in the Olympics. You played for gold medals. You played for championships, the Pan Am’s with the best players in the world.’”
ODU came out and dominated in the second half, beating the Lady Techsters 75-65. It was the school’s first ever national title in women’s sports.
The reign of the First Monarchs had begun.
Reign of the Queens
Following their national championship, Dr. Jarrett’s gamble was looking like a masterstroke. He followed up his hiring of Marianne Stanley by bringing on Beth Anders to run the field hockey program. She would go on to become one of the most successful coaches in the history of the sport.
But as Anders was building her team into a juggernaut, Monarchs women’s basketball could already be argued as one. Nearly everyone from their 1979 national title team was returning and adding even more firepower in the form of 6’8 freshman Anne Donovan.
“Our big pitch was ‘come on to the campus and just see what this is about’,” Marianne explains. “We’ve built something special.”
Legend has it that Donovan had letters from over 200 schools across the country and Penn State’s head women’s basketball coach Pat Meiser even drafted football coach Joe Paterno — a larger than life figure at that time — to help recruit her. But Anne chose Old Dominion and immediately was baptized by fire.
The date was December 13th, 1979 in the Norfolk Scope arena.
Standing opposite ODU that night was the Soviet Union national women’s basketball team, who had not lost a competition since 1958 and was preparing for the 1980 Olympics. At the time, the United States hadn’t yet boycotted the Moscow Games in protest of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. So this, in many ways, was a tune up for the summer and the Monarchs were, to many at the time, on the list of sacrificial lambs for 6’11 Uljana Semjonova, widely regarded as the best player in the world, and her team of Soviet superstars.
“We obviously can’t hold [the game] on campus, because our arena can’t fit that many people so we move the game to the downtown arena, the Norfolk Scope,” says Marianne. “I think that was the only time the building sold out.”
Over 10,000 fans, the largest crowd in ODU history for a women’s basketball and one of the largest in the sport to that point, came out to see the game. Old Dominion, against all odds, led the Soviets 34-32 at halftime. All with 6’8 freshman Anne Donovan guarding the most dominant player in the world.
“Anne was just a stick figure her freshman year,” Nancy says with a laugh. “I’m looking at the bench going, ‘where’s Annie?’ And there she was behind Semenova.”
The USSR won that game 76-66 but the impact was felt at Old Dominion. If they could stand toe to toe with a team like that, there weren’t many in the AIAW that were going to get the best of the Monarchs. Indeed, that contention proved to be correct. With Nancy — whose Rucker Park nickname ‘fire’ had been replaced by a new moniker, “Lady Magic” — leading the way, ODU beat all-comers, filling up their home gym in Norfolk while doing so.
Their only loss that year was a 59-57 nail-biter to Louisiana Tech. But they would get the better of the Lady Techsters in the postseason for the second straight year, defeating them in the AIAW Final Four before besting Pat Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Volunteers to claim their second straight national championship. Skeptics became fans and fans became diehards.
“It was like the ‘Show Me State’ in Missouri, you had to show them,” says Debbie. “And they became believers, especially in tight games. When we played Louisiana Tech in games or Tennessee, we’d be sold out days or weeks before the game. So that was an indication in itself too.”
After the 1980 season, Lieberman and Nissen graduated while the team was handed over to Trombly, Donovan and Rhonda Rompola. They would make the AIAW Final Four before falling to Tennessee in 1981. As the page turned on the season, an era of women’s basketball ended alongside it.
The NCAA would take over governance of the sport heading into the 1981-1982 season and women’s programs would officially be a part of March Madness (although it wouldn’t be called that for decades to come). It was a new chapter and a time for teams to stake their claim as the best yet again. So the Monarchs had one goal: extend their reign to this new world.
Conquering the NCAA
Jim Jarrett’s desire for excellence in women’s sports didn’t stop at making sure his teams were successful. As a member on the NCAA Tournament committee, he cajoled and convinced everyone at the table to let Old Dominion and the city of Norfolk host the first two years of the newly minted event.
“Both years sold out,” Debbie remembers. “The marketing value that the NCAA brought to that tournament made it a much easier sell. There was some money — not a lot, but some — to help us do that whereas in previous days you were doing that with your own budget.”
It brought prestige and credence to the women’s game and allowed for more moneyed programs to view the sport as legitimate. Soon, major schools from the SEC and ACC were starting to invest in women’s basketball. Marianne knew that she had to go out and continue recruiting.
The Monarchs started to load up after 1982, bringing in Medina Dixon — who transferred from Pam Parsons’ South Carolina program, embroiled in controversy at the time — and Lisa Blais to help complete the roster around Anne Donovan. But there was a particular player in Connecticut that Old Dominion coaches set their sites on and felt could be the key to another national title.
“[Tracy Claxton] was a fiery player who really worked very hard,” says legendary Wilbur Cross high school coach Barbara Thaxton, who coached Tracy since middle school. “She never asked how many points she had. She always wanted to know how many rebounds she got.”
It would be fair to say that Tracy was the first superstar girls basketball recruit to come out of the state of Connecticut. She was the first women’s player in the state to eclipse 2,000 career points and, by the time her Wilbur Cross career was done, she had set the career scoring record as well. Barbara Thaxton was her head coach and knew she had a generational player on her hands. They won three state titles together and it stood to reason that Tracy would keep winning at the college level.
She went first to Kansas, where she played for the legendary Marian Washington. But with so many stars of the program leaving after the 1982 season, she prepared to transfer to a place that could contend for a title. At that time, Barbara had been given a great opportunity: replacing Jerry Busone, who was starting up a program at the University of Hawaii, at ODU.
“I went down to Old Dominion for an interview,” she remembers. “And by the time I got back home [to Connecticut], Dr. Jarrett called and said ‘we want to offer you the job’”.
Alongside Barbara and Marianne was another assistant, former Monarch guard Wendy Larry, who joined the program after some time coaching at Virginia Wesleyan. Together, the three of them worked to get Tracy Claxton to come to Old Dominion.
“I called home and found out Ms. Thaxton went to Old Dominion,” she says. “So I knew if I was to go there, then I know there’s someone that that knows me and is going to look out for me.”
In 1984, with Tracy anchoring the front court, it felt like the Monarchs would return to their rightful place on the throne. They had several high profile wins over Louisiana Tech, USC and Cheyney State to name a few. But as they went into the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, they fell to C. Vivian Stringer’s Wolves in a rematch. The Monarchs were back to the drawing board but undeterred as they headed into the 1984-1985 season with a veteran team that was hungry.
“Once [the freshmen] started to learn the plays and how we worked, we knew something special was, you know…we could be there,” says Blais. “It’s kind of a ‘how hard do you want to work?’”
They worked plenty, defeating Syracuse, NC State and Ohio State in the Tournament to make the 1985 Final Four in Austin, Texas. There, they met first an upstart Northeast Louisiana program with one of the best young guards in the nation in E.J. Lee. Marianne got her team together and suggested something somewhat novel at the time.
“We threw a junk defense at them,” she explains.
To counter Lee, they put out a 1-3-1 zone.
“[It was] brilliant and I’d never seen it before,” Wendy adds. “I was absolutely flabbergasted at some of the things that she would see and acknowledge to the players that this could make a difference.”
The Monarchs won the Final Four matchup 57-47 and then had another herculean task: the Georgia Bulldogs and their tag team of Katrina McClain and Teresa Edwards. Unlike Northeast Louisiana, UGA had size, athleticism and two dynamic playmakers instead of one.
Georgia managed to handle the new look well, taking a lead into the half. Marianne delivered a speech to try and fire up her team. When she was done, Tracy Claxton turned and asked if the head coach was finished. Stanley said yes and the coaches left the room. Quickly, they could hear Claxton through the wall.
“I asked the coaches to step out so I can have a conversation with [my teammates and specifically Medina Dixon],” Tracy says. “I was like, ‘look, we’ve come too far. If you don’t get your ass up on them boards, we’re gonna lose this goddamn championship.”
While tough on the surface, the relationship and bond between Medina and Tracy was so deep that the fiery speech achieved its’ intended effect. Dixon turned in one of her best career performances in the second half.
“She did her job, like she was encouraged to get more aggressive,” adds Tracy. “She was the ice woman cometh.”
As players got each other in the right headspace, Marianne decided to dig into the schematic bag of tricks one more time.
“We knew Marianne knew what she was doing,” says Barbara. “She had it all figured out.”
Instead of a 1-3-1 zone, ODU employed a ‘triangle-and-two’ where two defenders — in this case Tracy Claxton and Medina Dixon — guarded the two best players while the other three defenders formed a triangle in the paint.
It frustrated Georgia’s two superstars and, combined with Dixon’s effort on the boards, the Monarchs won the 1985 National Championship.
The Line of Succession
It was a full circle moment for everyone at ODU. For Dr. Jim Jarrett, it was a validation of his desire for selective excellence. For players and assistants, a confirmation that their hard work had paid off. But for Marianne Stanley, it represented something more.
“It was wonderful to have a team and school all understanding that we’re in this together and we got something special and let’s do our best to keep it goin as long as we can keep it going,” she says, decades later. “I think it took me, honestly, until the third national championship. It took that long for me to believe in my soul that this is what I was meant to do.”
From the AIAW to the NCAA, the Monarchs had established themselves as Queens of the Court.
Shortly after that 1985 season, Marianne decided that it might be time to return to her roots in Philadelphia. She was a single parent and wanted her daughter to grow up around her extended family. Everything was still running smoothly at Old Dominion but life felt a little more important at the time.
Her decision to leave shocked everyone in the women’s basketball world, from former players to fellow colleagues and even those on her staff.
“I was shocked,” says Wendy, who had left after the 1985 season to become the head coach at Arizona. “But I know how much family is important to Marianne.”
The Monarchy would continue but under the reign of a new leader whose success opened up women’s basketball to the larger world. While the legacy of Old Dominion was built in the early years of the sport, it wouldn’t be until decades later that the Monarchs of Old could see the scope of their impact on the game and how it lives on today.
Amazing!!!!!! I’m captivated by the telling of ODUWBB history. I’m even more honored to be at the realm of such a legendary program consisting of legendary players, coaches, community and a visionary AD.