The Mighty Macs

I doubt many people have ever heard of Immaculata College.  Hint-It is located about 20 miles west of Philadelphia.  I would also suspect that few people know which team won the first women's national basketball championship.  Hint-It was held in 1972.

That first national championship was won by Immaculata College which had less than 500 female students.  They also went on to win the national championship in 1973 and 1974, played in the national finals in 1975 and 1976 and made it to the Final Four in 1977.  Their coach was Cathy Rush who quit college coaching after seven years at age 30 with a 149-15 record.

The story of Cathy Rush and Immaculata was recently made it into a movie, The Mighty Macs, that is now available on DVD.  It is a inspirational story that shows the power of hard work, heart, focus and faith.  Rush expected a lot out of her players and believed that they could be #1.  In fact, she passed out buttons early in her tenure to everyone with the inscription , "We will be #1".

Immaculata won the national championship in 1972 by beating a team (West Chester University) in the finals that had beaten them by 32 points just one week before in a regional tournament.  Cathy Rush was one great coach.

This is further evidenced by the success some of her players had as coaches in their own right after they left Immaculata.

• Theresa Shank Grentz
• Head coach at St. Joseph's, Rutgers and Illinois
• Rene Muth Portland
• Head coach at Penn State
• Marianne Crawford Stanley
• Head coach at Old Dominion (3 NCAA championships), Penn, USC and Cal-Berkeley

If you are looking for a nice G-rated movie with a message, you can't wrong with The Mighty Macs.