PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Harry Perretta spent 42 years as the head women's basketball coach at Villanova University, winning 783 games at the helm of the Wildcats before retiring in 2020.
Perretta was hired at Villanova at the age of 22 back in 1978. He talked about how he landed the job at such a young age.
"I get an interview. At the time, I didn’t know the person that was interviewing me, her name was Mary Anne Steenrod, and she was the women's athletic director, I didn't know that her husband had played at [Lycoming College] before I did. It was unbelievable," he recalled.
"So now, she knows the [Lycoming] head coach Dutch Burch, and he gives me a great recommendation. And at the time, I had more experience than the majority of people that were applying for the job, even though I was 22. I had had two years of college coaching experience and no one else really did. And at the time, you have to remember, the job was part time, so there weren’t a ton of applicants as you would think it would be now. So that's how I wind up getting it."
Perretta took the Wildcats to 11 NCAA Tournaments and enjoyed a ton of success. However, he said that for him, practice was a lot more fun than the games.
"Practice to me was always the fun part. Teaching kids, everybody playing hard and having fun, and we would joke around at practice. The games kind of interfered with that sometimes because, not that you have to win, but people want you to win and they are always talking about are you going to win," he said.
"People [with concerns about] how many minutes playing time, all that stuff would get all into it. Where with practice, you never worried about that stuff. You just kind of like did your thing, prepared, practiced, had fun, played hard. But like I said, the games always interfered with that for me."
You can listen to the entire interview with Harry Perretta by checking out the latest episode, above, of the KYW Newsradio original podcast "1-on-1 with Matt Leon." For more, subscribe on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.