Never Stop Shooting: How Marie Maguire ’69 EE Helped Launch Villanova’s First Women’s Basketball Team
“My father, a Villanova alum, bought me a basketball,” says Marie Maguire ’69 EE. “It was unusual at the time for a girl to play basketball, but I fell in love with the sport and never stopped shooting.”
Growing up in an athletic family in the Olney section of Philadelphia, Marie Maguire ’69 EE started playing basketball in 1957 at age 10—in an era when that was a rarity.
“My father, a Villanova alum, bought me a basketball,” says Maguire. “It was unusual at the time for a girl to play basketball, but I fell in love with the sport and never stopped shooting.”
Maguire’s passion for the game and courageous spirit eventually laid the foundation for what would become Villanova’s Women’s Basketball program.
A math standout in high school, Maguire wanted to pursue math in college, but that wasn’t an option for women at Villanova in 1965. Instead, she chose engineering and joined just three other women in her class.
No stranger to being surrounded by male classmates, Maguire and her friend Rosemarie Greyson-Fleg ’69 CLAS began shooting hoops in Alumni Hall. “It was tough for us to get time on the court, but we were persistent and got some playing time in a pickup environment with the guys,” says Maguire.
In 1986, along with her husband, Daniel Caramanico ’69 CE, Maguire founded Caramanico Maguire Associates Inc., which for 37 years has helped companies develop their sales forces.
The only other women’s athletic team on campus at the time was tennis, but Maguire and Greyson-Fleg decided to form an official basketball team. They distributed signs around campus, held tryouts and practices, and played their first games in a benefit tournament. “As the team’s first captain, I signed us up for the equivalent of the NCAA,” says Maguire. “We approached Eastern to ask them to add us to their schedule, along with Holy Family, Cabrini, Rosemont, Immaculata and Gwynedd Mercy.”
The women found their own rides to the games and paid for the refs themselves, collecting quarters in the locker room to cover the fee. Before the start of the 1968–69 season, Maguire’s senior year, the University had hired a coach and supplied the team with a budget of $108, which they used to buy uniforms. “When I put that uniform on, it was an incredible feeling,” says Maguire. “I was so proud to represent Villanova.”
Maguire played rover and was one of only two players to cross the midline during the game, which was not played full court until 1971. “At the end of my senior season, we had a party in my dorm room in Good Counsel Hall to celebrate,” says Maguire. “It was the first year women were allowed to live in dorms at Villanova.”
After she graduated, Maguire earned a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, where she also played basketball on an all-male intramural team. She went on to earn her Master of Social Service from Bryn Mawr College, and in 1986, along with her husband, Daniel Caramanico ’69 CE, she founded Caramanico Maguire Associates Inc., which for 37 years has helped companies develop their sales forces. Maguire is also a member of the College’s Engineering Advisory Board.
Today, 55 years after her senior basketball season, Maguire still dreams of her days playing for Villanova. “Basketball has been a thread my entire life,” she says, “and I’m so incredibly proud to have been a part of history at Villanova.”