Ex-St. Francis coach an assistant at Army

By HUGH CONRAD
FOR THE TRIBUNE-DEMOCRAT

March 15, 2006 11:30 pm

— Dave Magarity never expected to be in this situation.
In early October, the former St. Francis men’s basketball coach drove to the Military Academy at West Point to acquire football credentials for the Central Michigan-Army football game as part of his job as assistant commissioner of the Mid-American Conference. He left there many hours later with a job offer.
The script was simple: Army was seeking an assistant women’s coach for a young head coach by the name of Maggie Dixon, who is the younger sister of Jamie Dixon, head men’s coach at Pitt.
With his 23 years as a head basketball coach in Division I schools, would Magarity be interested in aiding the 28-year-old Dixon? At first, his answer was no.
“I had a great job as assistant commissioner of a big-time conference, and everything was going great,” Magarity said in a telephone interview Tuesday from his West Point office. “Maybe I missed coaching, but I had been in it for 32 years and I was 55 years old. I was looking to finish it in something else.”
Magarity was head coach of the Red Flash from 1978 until 1983, and after a few years as an assistant at Iona College (N.Y.) and one at Marist College, he was named head coach at Marist in 1986, where he served for the next 18 years before resigning in 2004.
But after he considered the situation at West Point, which is little more than a half-hour drive from his home in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., he realized that it was worth a second look.
“The MAC office was in Cleveland and my wife had a teaching job in the Hudson Valley, having about 15 years in the New York state system,” Magarity said. “I did not know Maggie Dixon, but I had met Jamie when I was coaching at Marist and we played Pitt a couple of years ago. Maggie had been an assistant coach at DePaul for the past five years. But, before going further, I knew that I had to talk at length to her.”
That evening, the two coaches talked for two to three hours, Magarity said. However, before starting that conversation, Maggie made an important phone call to her friend and confidant: Her brother, Jamie.
“She called him and said that she was meeting with this guy tonight about being an assistant coach,” Magarity said about what Maggie told him of the conversation between the siblings. “She said that I had been around the game as a head coach for 23 years. (Jamie) and I did not know each other well, but he told her that she should jump at taking (me) because of my experience. Then we talked for a long time, and after that, I realized that she was a sharp young coach. I also realized that in coaching women, it helped having two daughters who had played the game, and that was a huge factor in understanding the situation.”
Magarity left West Point that October night not realizing what was about to happen. The Army women have put together a magical season, winning the school’s first Patriot League regular-season and tournament championships, leading to their first trip to the NCAA tournament.
Not even the men’s teams coached by Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski in the 1960s and 1970s had advanced to the NCAA tournament.
The Black Knights finished with a 20-10 record and earned a 15th seed in the pairings, which were announced Monday night. While the players are excited to be playing in the tournament, the Army squad will face one of the toughest teams in basketball: Coach Pat Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Vols.
Summitt was insulted by the tournament committee’s decision to give the Lady Vols a No. 2 seed. Tennessee (28-4) ranked sixth in The Associated Press poll, played the toughest schedule in the country, had the second best RPI, and beat LSU to win the SEC championship.
For Army, this is a tougher matchup than the coaches and players had anticipated as a 15th seed.
“For us to do well, we are going to have to play a perfect game,” Magarity said. “I have been calling around trying to get game tapes from everyone, and we have about a dozen. But, we should not try to overload the kids. We have played Baylor and Connecticut and St. John’s this year, three top-20 teams. We have the player of the year (Cara Enright) in the Patriot League and the rookie of the year (Alex McGuire). So, we just have to go out and play our best.”
Dixon was also named as Patriot League coach of the year.
The Magarity family loves basketball. Magarity and his wife, Rita, have two children presently in the game. Their older daughter, Maureen, is an assistant coach at Fairfield (Conn.) after being a captain of a Marist team in 2004 that made its first trip to the tournament. She served as an assistant coach at Marist last year. His son, Dave Jr., was a redshirt sophomore with the Marist Red Foxes team this year. A third daughter, Katie, is a graduate of Marist.
This season is one that he could not have anticipated a year ago, but it is one that the veteran coach will cherish, regardless of the outcome of the Tennessee game.
“It has been incredible,” Magarity said. “I do not think that I’ve ever enjoyed a season like this one, and I have had some great seasons. This is just such a great group of players to be around, and they are talented. And the good news is that we have almost everything back next year.”
Magarity has been named coach of the year on 11 occasions, with his 1987 Marist team that featured Rik Smits earning him the Northeast Conference award.
Magarity graduated from St. Francis in 1974 and was an assistant coach to Pete Lonergan before being named head coach in 1978.