For men’s basketball at Immaculata, the future is now



By Bob Steiner
Editorial/Sports Assistant


On the one hand, the Immaculata University men’s basketball team is looking to carve out its own piece of school history. On the other, the team is hoping that history, in a way, repeats itself.

“I knew about the history of the women’s program — that piqued my interest from the start,” said head coach Jamie Chadwin, reflecting on his initial desire to pursue the job he has now. “I said, ‘If they can do these things back then, when [women’s] basketball was not as big … why can’t we do that now?’”

At a time when women’s sports was an afterthought in the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) the Immaculata women’s basketball team was forcing the college sports world to take notice.

Under the guidance of coach Cathy Rush, the Immaculata women participated in the first five national championship games of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), winning the first three, from 1972 to ’74.
Rush’s squad also played in the first-ever nationally televised women’s collegiate basketball game, in 1975.

Three decades later, in 2005, the male hoops team at Immaculata, led by Chadwin, began its inaugural season, when the traditionally all-women’s institution became co-ed — 75 years after its founding by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1920.

Chadwin is no stranger to coaching success. As an assistant coach, he helped Gwynedd-Mercy College to a Pennsylvania Athletic Conference (PAC) title and the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament.

But given the monumental task of building a team from scratch, how exactly does one begin?

“Through the recruiting process, [assistant coach] Scott Friedman and I really hit the road hard, trying to find kids that we thought fit the mold that we were trying to cut out,” Chadwin said.

“We needed players, yes. But at the same time, we were looking for kids that had the desire to be part of something new,” he said. “Not every kid wants to come into a situation and start something from the ground up. Some kids really wanted to go to an established program, and fit in and just be a part of that, and that’s fine. But it takes a unique personality for a kid to come in and really take on the responsibility of being a pioneer for their school.”

Of course Chadwin wasn’t fooling himself. Great teams don’t sprout up overnight.

Along with his assistant coaches Friedman, Joe Arnold, and Brian Shane, Chadwin took a one-game-at-a-time approach in his first season, instructing his players initially just to focus on just getting their first win, then their first road win, then their first league win, and so on. It was an incremental method that allowed Chadwin and his staff to gauge the team’s progress throughout the course of the season while creating the foundation for the future of the program.

“We knew we couldn’t measure [success] in wins or losses,” he said. “The approach we took was that if we work our hardest and we do things the right way, and [if] we know that we are putting forth the best effort we can, the wins or losses will take care of themselves. Our goals changed as the season changed — we set a lot of short-term goals.

“I told the kids in the beginning [of the season] that, yes, our ultimate goal is we want to be NCAA Division III basketball champions,” Chadwin added, “but I said. ‘That’s not going to happen if we don’t accomplish these very, very small, short-term goals.’ And that’s the approach that we took.”

His approach paid off for the young team, which included 10 freshmen on its roster.

Although the Mighty Macs posted a 5-20 record on the season, four of those wins came in the final 10 games of the season, as the team continued to improve — it played its best basketball down the stretch.

It also suffered several close defeats, losing by one point to Eastern University, by two points each to College Misericordia and Wesley College, and by three points to Arcadia University. The loss to Eastern was the first home game for the Immaculata men’s basketball team, and as heartbreaking as it was, Chadwin couldn’t help but come away with a positive outlook.

“We were the first game in a doubleheader, and our gym was packed,” he recalled. “Our gym seats, maybe, 500 people, and there were probably about 600 there. And it was enthusiastic, it was energetic — and we lost by one [point] at the buzzer.

“I’m very new to the community, but I was embraced, and our program was embraced by everybody, and now, with recruiting this year, when we have kids come to visit, they see that.”

Chadwin and his players are, no doubt, looking to add to that tradition. For Immaculata’s men’s team, national championships may be a few years down the road, and yet to be included in the rich annals of the school’s sports. But the future for the men begins now.

“We’re still relatively young in the overall growth of the program,” Chadwin said. “With the basketball history of the school, if you take men’s and women’s and put them together, we’re a speck. ... [But] we’ve got it going. We’re starting to write our own chapter in the history books.”

Bob Steiner is the CS&T’s Editorial and Sports Assistant. E-mail him at rsteiner@adphila.org or call 215-587-3698.