From 15 years ago: “Decision [to fire Coach Dave Magarity] still haunts St. Francis”
… “In some ways, St. Francis men’s basketball has never recovered from
that decision to part with Magarity.”
A few weeks ago, Dave Magarity, who served as head coach of the St. Francis College Red Flash men’s basketball team from 1978 to 1983, announced that he was retiring from coaching after having directed the Army West Point women’s program for the past 15 years.
Magarity started his coaching career at St. Francis as an assistant to Coach Pete Lonergan in the 1970s after having been part of the Red Flash program.
When Lonergan resigned in 1978, St. Francis hired Magarity as the youngest Div. I head coach in the country. However, five years later, he was summarily dismissed without being told why.
The move angered many people, and as I pointed out 15 years ago in a column for the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat, the decision haunted the program for many years.
Column
I wrote the column as part of a story about how he became an assistant coach to Maggie Dixon at Army. Maggie was the sister of Jamie Dixon, then coach at Pitt and now at TCU, and she was just 28. Jamie persuaded his sister that having a coach who had almost a quarter-century of head coaching experience would be a benefit.
The Army team had made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in history, and Dixon and Magarity were thrilled. Little did anyone know that Maggie would tragically suffer a heart problem that took her life.
Here is the opening of that column from March 27, 2006,
Sometimes, people burn down bridges, and the fire never quits smoldering.
Dave Magarity has put his St. Francis basketball coaching experience behind him. After all, he left St. Francis as its men’s basketball coach 23 years ago, and he has reached the NCAA Tournament four times at Marist College, Iona and Army.
Magarity is presently an assistant coach with the U.S. Military Academy women’s basketball team that earned an NCAA Tournament berth this year for the first time in history.
Over the years, Magarity has talked little about his firing and the personal devastation that resulted from that decision. He has, however, not forgotten the press release that announced his firing in May 1983.
“They said that they were going to ‘rejuvenate’ the program,” Magarity said last week about the wording that St. Francis used to explain his release. “If they think back today, exactly how has it ‘rejuvenated’ the program? They have had three winning seasons since then.”
Actually, they have had four winning seasons in the past 23, but his point is accurate. The St. Francis men’s winning percentage since then is just .425 (272-367), less than Magarity was in his five years (60-76, .441).
The Red Flash have won only one Northeast Conference championship, one that gave them an NCAA Tournament berth.
Hugh Conrad, “Decision still haunts St. Francis,” The Tribune-Democrat, March 27, 2006
Magarity became the winningest coach in Army women’s history over the past 16 years, and he is the winningest coach in Marist College men’s basketball history. However, he has endured some difficult times in coaching, and I am going to explore the positives and challenging times to understand how challenging coaching college basketball really is.
The firing at St. Francis
If St. Francis had fired Magarity in March at the end of the 1983 season, citing his record of 60-76 in five years, winning just 44 percent of his games, the outcry would not have been severe. However, it was the way in which it was handled by the St. Francis administration that led to anger among many people — though quite frankly, a group within the Stokes Club, the supporters of Red Flash basketball, wanted him gone.
Father Christian Oravec was the president of the college at the time [it is now known as St. Francis University].
However, the person who wanted Magarity gone was the dean of students, Jeffrey J. Quin, a controversial man who was fired by Father Christian about seven years later after a terrible Middle States Evaluation of Quin’s tenure.
Athletic Director Art Martynuska declined to fire Magarity, according to what he told me later. That left Quin to convince Father Christian to make the move.
I interviewed Father Christian for about two hours in 2010 for a magazine feature that I was writing about Charles Schwab’s estate and how St. Francis secured it. It was a great few hours. We toured the mansion that now houses members of the Franciscan order, as well as a great deal of the grounds.
However, I never asked Father about the Magarity firing. It was not germane.
My brother, Father Jim Conrad, said that he had asked Father Christian about it and that Christian had said that he had made a mistake in trusting Quin at that time. I cannot confirm that other than my conversation with my brother, who was ordained with Father Christian in 1964.
Had they not waited until the end of May, when Magarity could not find another coaching job, leaving him with what was in effect an intern job at Iona, it would not have been so egregious.
Dave lost benefits for him, his wife and daughter, to say nothing about his income. What rankled him more than anything was their saying that they wanted to “rejuvenate” the program without ever sitting him down and explaining why they were letting him go.
Effect
The column indicates the long-term effect of the firing,
Sometimes, people burn down bridges, and the fire never quits smoldering.
Dave Magarity has put his St. Francis basketball coaching experience behind him. After all, he left St. Francis as its men’s basketball coach 23 years ago, and he has reached the NCAA Tournament four times at Marist College, Iona and Army.
Magarity is presently an assistant coach with the U.S. Military Academy women’s basketball team that earned an NCAA Tournament berth this year for the first time in history.
Over the years, Magarity has talked little about his firing and the personal devastation that resulted from that decision. He has, however, not forgotten the press release that announced his firing in May 1983.
“They said that they were going to ‘rejuvenate’ the program,” Magarity said last week about the wording that St. Francis used to explain his release. “If they think back today, exactly how has it ‘rejuvenated’ the program? They have had three winning seasons since then.”
Actually, they have had four winning seasons in the past 23, but his point is accurate. The St. Francis men’s winning percentage since then is just .425 (272-367), less than Magarity was in his five years (60-76, .441).
The Red Flash have won only one Northeast Conference championship, one that gave them an NCAA Tournament berth.
Hugh Conrad, The Tribune-Democrat, March 27, 2006
Ultimately, Dave rebounded and became an assistant and then a head coach at Marist. That will be part two.
I concluded the column by talking about how much his first year at Army had affected him,
Magarity said that he never enjoyed a season as much as he did this year with Army’s women.
His three children were basketball players, and one is currently coaching.
Maureen, 24, now an assistant coach at Fairfield College, was just a small child when her father had to move on with life. Her dad landed an assistant coaching job at Iona, which played in two NCAA tournaments, and then became head coach at Marist, where he coached for 18 years.
The coach moved on, but the St. Francis men’s program has had significant problems in doing so 23 years after the fact.
Hugh Conrad, “Decision still haunts St. Francis,” March 27, 2006
The Red Flash have still won just one NEC title after the Mike Iuzzolino/Jim Baron days, which were a respite from the losing of the 1980s.
The crowds have never returned to the Stokes Center in the same numbers as they did in the 1970s and 80s prior to that firing.
They had a few sellouts in 1991 when they won the NEC, but even then, there were not many.
Obviously, this year, the games are played without fans, but before that, a sellout was an anomaly, which is sad. The days when Cornbread Maxwell and his Final Four team at UNC-Charlotte lost to the Red Flash in front of a large, raucous crowd will never again return.
Part Two: The Magarity years and Rik Smits
Tribune-Democrat column
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