PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Theresa Shank Grentz is a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
As a player, the Cardinal O’Hara product was a star on the incredible "Mighty Macs" teams at Immaculata in the early '70s that won three straight national championships. She then went on to win more than 650 games as a head coach at St. Joseph's, Rutgers, Illinois and Lafayette.
Grentz spoke to Matt Leon about her life in basketball, from being a part of those historic Immaculata teams to how she got into coaching and much more. You can listen to the entire conversation, above, on the KYW Newsradio original podcast "1-on-1 with Matt Leon."
The following is a lightly edited excerpt from the episode.
Matt Leon: So you play for Cathy Rush and you guys came in the same year. Her first year was your first year. Is that correct?
Theresa Shank Grentz: Yes, it was. Cathy was terrific. I mean, she was way, way ahead of her time. She just had a way of motivating, she knew what she wanted to do. Her husband, Ed, at the time was in the NBA, so she was constantly studying, doing things.
I don't know if you ever saw the movie, "The Mighty Macs." I feel bad because Ed kind of got a bum rap in that. He really was supposed to be the antagonist and it wasn't really true. He really was very, very supportive of us at that time. And, you know, Cathy was great. To this day, she coached those teams and did a marvelous job.
You talk about telling a teammate, "We're gonna win every game." But do you remember when you realized how special the group was? Was there a game or even a practice where you just kind of looked around and went, 'Yep, we've got it?'"
I don't know that it was then. I think it was later. I think it was afterwards. Even today, we still remain very close. Friends, when we get together, you go through the initial catching up on who's doing what and then you go back to that time in the early 70s when we were in college and classmates, and teammates and things.
But the one thing about that team — when we played we would not disappoint each other. No matter what we had to do, we would not disappoint each other. The word "selfish" was never part of what we were doing. We didn't really know what the national championship was at the time. You know, getting out there and on standby and this, that, the next thing — it really is an incredible story, the way the thing came about.
But I think when we look back is when I know I'm most appreciated. It was just as they called it, it was our Camelot. It was a wonderful time. Wonderful time.
I was reading up on that first year — and I don't know if some of the articles I read had some creative license given to them — but it does sound like, originally you guys lost in a regional tournament and you thought that was it. And then you found out you got into the — it wasn't the NCAA then, it was the AIAW tournament — and you guys were frankly kind of caught off guard. Is that correct?
What happened was, it was regionalised. And we were in 1A, there was 1A and 1B. That was the New England, East Coast, whatever. And because we had so many schools, we had two teams from, I think we were 1B, I don't remember at the time.
So we played Westchester. We were down at Towson, and we played Westchester in the championship game and got clocked, I think by like 30-38 points or something, whatever. And then we go. But the first two teams, the champion, and the runner up, were able to go to the national tournament in Southern Illinois. And as it turns out, we were 15th [seed]. There were 16 teams and we were the 15th seed.
The reason was because at that time, if you hosted the tournament, your school got to play. So Southern Illinois was the 16th seed, we were the 15th. And for the 15th seed in the tournament, to be able to win the thing was, you just don't think that's going to be what's going to happen there.
In fact, you know, when it came up, when we lost that game, the next week, we still had a game. I think we were playing Rosemont, if I remember correctly, and the following week was when we were supposed to go to the nationals. So we had a weekend between and we played Rosemont or Cabrini, I don't remember which one.
But anyway, Cathy, being ahead of her time, did not play a lot of the starters that day. You know, she rested us, but we were able to win. But the score was very close. Well, the next morning — and I only learned this a couple years ago, Matt, when Cathy and I were playing golf, and she told me the story — Sister Mary of Lourdes, who was the president of Immaculata, called her at, like, 6:30 in the morning, and wanted to know why that score was so close. Because they really had, I guess, their druthers about sending us. I guess there were some doubters on the staff, the faculty, for why they would send this team all the way out to Southern Illinois to play. There's not a budget line at this time. You know, there's not a postseason budget line. So there's no money.
And Mary of Lourdes was a little concerned as to why the score was so close. Cathy had to explain to her what it was. I don't think it went over well. But anyway, there we went that next week. And in order to go, the sisters had said, "Listen, let's just pray that they go out there and they don't get killed, and you know, they don't lose their confidence."
So they get the tickets together. I think Cathy and two others may have been the only ones who had regular tickets. The rest of us were all standby. So not only [did we] not have enough tickets to take the entire team — we only took eight and left three more home — but ... she had to figure out which ones, if we were standby, which one of us was going to go first? It was a three ring circus, I have to be honest.
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So we get out there. And you know, we have to rent cars, we get into O'Hare and we have to fly down, we have to drive down to Southern Illinois. And then we go down there and we win the first one, and they're all happy about that. Well, we don't have any tickets to come back. So we win the second one, we win the third one. And now we're going to play and we win the fourth one.
So now it's time to come home. So we drive back to O'Hare Airport. We have no tickets to come home. I mean, I don't have a clue about anything at this point. I'm just thinking, "Alright, you know, I'm at O'Hare Airport." I'm looking at this thing. This is massive. I've never been in anything like this. And Cathy and Sister Mary of Lourdes are going back and forth. Sister Mary of Lourdes calls her "sugar daddy," one of those donors that those good sisters had. And he said his name was Holloway, Mr. Holloway, Cas Holloway. And he said, "Sister, fly 'em back first class."
So they flew us back first class, but on the same plane [with] the West Chester kids that we had just played. So we're in first class and when we land in Philadelphia, the pilot said, "Would the Immaculata team still remain on the plane?" So poor West Chester had to walk all the way past us to get out.
But on the outside, there were 500 people at the gate waiting for us to get off the plane. It was just the most incredible thing. All my life, whenever I get off the plane, I always look for that crowd to see what was still there. But it was great.
You know, I felt so badly for West Chester, because they had to walk through all that. And they had laughed about Immaculata, because when we lost at Towson — we got beaten so badly — the joke was because it was during the oil embargo and all that business, and they said, "Hey, Immaculata, you just ran out of gas." It was in the paper.
So when we got out to Illinois, and we had the banquet or whatever, they were laughing, joking with us, "Hey Immaculata, did you bring your gas cans this time? Make sure you have your gas." And here now they had to walk through that group there. So a lot of good memories, a lot of fun. But truly ... all the stars lined up just perfect for that to happen.
So it was West Chester beating you in that regional tournament, then you beat West Chester for the national championship. Real quick, what did you guys do differently? What was the key to from getting blown out to turning around a few weeks later and beating them for the championship?
One, I don't know this was — the night before in the regionals, we had all gone out to dinner. I don't know why they took us out to dinner. We should never have done that. And then I think we were out a little too late, whatever and came back and we just — we did not play well. And then, when we went out there, it was like, "OK, we lost this game. But forget it, we're gonna do what we have to do here and get this done."
It's not like we had any kind of special plays or players to come in with. This is what we had, and this is what we're going to do. And we just did it. Again, I think the biggest thing, Matt, was we just would not disappoint each other. That was key.
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You talked about getting off the plane and seeing 500 people waiting for you. Was that the first moment when you realized the magnitude of what you had done? Or was there something else before then that really kind of was like "Wow, like, OK, I get it?"
I think we knew that, you know, we could play. I think we knew that we could count on each other. And I keep going back to that.
But again, when we saw that crowd there that time ... it was like being a rock star, but you didn't know it. I guess some of the other players might have some different ideas about it, but I just like to reminisce sometimes about,you know, "We really did that. We really made that happen."
The other thing that happened was one of the guys that was great in Philadelphia for us at the time was Dick Weiss. Dick Weiss — "Hoops" Weiss — was with the Daily News and he was covering all the pros. He covered the Sixers and stuff. But at that time, the Eagles, the Phillies, the Flyers, the Sixers all had losing records. It was a tough time on our pro teams. So what happened was, we ended up on the back page of the Philadelphia Daily News and Dick Weiss was the guy who came out and followed us.
Dick knew talent. He knew it before we did and he followed us. The thing that we kept winning and kept making this happen — the entire Philadelphia area followed the Mighty Macs. And we kept winning and yes, everybody loves a winner, and we're doing that. As I said, the pro teams at that time were struggling. So we were the hit. We were the Cinderella. And I think Dick Weiss was key about that. He really had a lot to do with that.
You know, you look back and you think, "Geez, we were on the back page of the Philadelphia Daily News," because that's what you did. You got up, you got your coffee, you got your 15 cents, you got the Daily News and off you went.
Philadelphia is a great sports town. And even to this day, sometimes when I'm standing on the tee box at the Women's Golf Association, I take some pictures, you know, for the tournaments and somebody will see my name badge and go, "Wait, Mighty Macs." So they relate to that one time, that one moment, that special moment that was ours, and will always be ours.
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