Dacko a queen of hoops

Robert (Cal) Hubbard, having been a Major League umpire and umpire-in-chief of the American League as well as a top-notch NFL lineman, holds the distinction of being the only person inducted into both the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the National Football Hall of Fame. Jim Thorpe, an athletic jack-of-all-trades, is in both the college and pro football Halls of Fame.

What may surprise you, however, is that UMass women’s basketball coach, Marnie Dacko, has them both beat. She is a member of three halls of fame: The Trumbull (Connecticut) High School, the Southern Connecticut State University and the New England Basketball Halls of Fame.

But she didn’t get there by luck. Her success is the result of an entire life dedicated to knowing and studying the intricacies and fibers of what makes up the game of basketball.

In 1971, a 16-year old Marnie Dacko moved with her family from Chamblee, Georgia, to the town of Trumbull, Connecticut, when her father, who worked for General Electric, was transferred. The young Dacko entered Trumbull High School for the first time her junior year and looked to make an impression with its basketball program.

Well, she did that and then some, winning the school’s first state basketball title in the Eagles’ history in 1974, her senior year.

“I think I was the biggest player they’ve seen,” Dacko recounted. “Coming into an environment and having basketball as a common thread, it was a great opportunity for me. We put Trumbull on the map. Our men’s team, at the time, was state runners-up and the women’s team won it [the championship title].”

Her dominance and passion on the high school court proved to Dacko that basketball was something that would follow her throughout her life – including college.

And if you had thoughts about collegiate basketball or physical education back in 1974, only one school came to your mind: Southern Connecticut State University.

Dacko played on the softball team, too, as a pitcher and first-base-player in addition to earning immense respect for her work on the floor.

“I played post, but I was a post player that could hit the outside shot before the three-point shot was even introduced – which is a scary thing,” Dacko joked. “We were the UConn of my generation. We ran a fast-breaking team, we ran a lot. Our rivals back then were Texas, Penn State, UMass was a rival and Springfield College was a rival way back then.”

Four years of hard work and solid performances finally earned her a spot among the most honored and revered members of the Owls’ family when she was elected into the SCSU Basketball Hall of Fame.

“It’s a great honor simply because Southern has had so many talented and great women’s basketball players,” Dacko said. “The tradition started way back in the early ‘70s and they’ve always produced some amazing basketball team.

“[It’s] great to be associated with so many of my teammates that are incredible athletes, as well as human beings.”

Dacko would graduate in 1978 will a bachelor’s degree in Health and Physical Education.

Before breaking onto the UMass scene, Dacko started her successful coaching career right after graduation. She received an offer from St. John’s (N.Y.) University and pounced on the golden opportunity.

By the time her tenure as the Red Storm’s assistant coach ended in 1984, she had accumulated an overall record of 118-43, including a school record 27 wins in 1982-83, and two Big East Conference Tournament titles. She also won 102 games during her last four seasons when the team made four consecutive trips to the postseason, three of which were to the AIAW or NCAA tournaments.

Dacko then migrated a little further west to Evanston, Ill., where she would spend the next 11 years of her life as the assistant coach of the Northwestern University Wildcats. As the team’s second-in-command, she obtained a record of 189-122, coached a total of 25 All-Big10 players and paid a visit to four NCAA tournaments from 1987-93.

“We produced some great teams within the Big-10 and still a lot of [the players] are either my colleagues today and my friends today and I’m still in touch with them. It was a tremendous experience,” Dacko commented.

Dacko’s coaching career would take one more pit-stop before rolling into UMass – this time at Cornell University.

As a rookie head coach she finished her first season at 12-14 and won Ivy League Coach of the Year honors. She would later become the all-time winningest women’s basketball coach in school history with 80 total victories, all the while coaching the Big Red to its only two winning seasons it has ever had in the Ivy League, during her final two years.

“I was there for seven years. [When I came in] they were the worst team in the league. I left there after seven years and they were one of the best teams in the league,” Dacko said. “It was a great experience for me – recruiting top-quality student-athletes, the kids worked extremely hard, there was never any established program already there, no history for women’s basketball, so I feel we really got it going from the fan-standpoint and a player-standpoint and it was a great university to work for.”

In 2002 she finally decided to take over the reins of the UMass women’s basketball wagon and she says she has never looked back.

“It was a great experience. It was a great opportunity for me to come in and have seven seniors, one of whom was Jen Butler [who would later be drafted into the WNBA],” Dacko said of her first season at UMass. “The second game in the A-10 season at Dayton, Katie Nelson blew out her knee and I think we won about three games after that. So, it was disappointing for the seniors, it was disappointing for somebody like Jen Butler, who had so much potential and we had so much of an upside as a team.”

The Minutewomen finished the 2002-03 season with a .500 record, going 14-14 overall. The injury to Nelson gave UMass a setback that was hard to come back from, as they ended the 2003-04 season with a 6-22 record.

“We really didn’t [recover]. Katie was out that year [too],” Dacko explained. “We were asking our players to do a lot with so few numbers, that starting the building process.”

That building process took the Maroon and White through 2004-05 ( in which they finished 14-15), as well as last season.

“Last year was a good year,” Dacko said. “I thought we underachieved non-conference. There were games that we lost at the buzzer where I thought we should have won. I think, lacking leadership – the leadership that I think we needed to have – we came out flat in games, we dug ourselves in a hole where we would turn the ball over. We would go through scoring droughts, at the same time turn the ball over and really not play defense. So, we didn’t make good decisions and that even dug us further in a hole.”

The team finished a disappointing 11-17. Pam Rosanio, Kate Mills and Tamara Tatham were UMass’ leading scorers with 350, 436 and 279 points, respectively.

“Off the court, she’s like a mom to me,” Rosanio, a junior guard, said. “And on the court she’s good. She’ll tell you when you’re really doing horribly and then she’ll tell you when you’re doing the right things. So, it’s good to hear both sides of it.”

“I think she’s more passionate about winning [then most coaches],” Tatham, a senior forward, commented. “She really wants to win. She’s not one of those coaches that is going to yell at you and make you do a whole bunch of sprints, because that’s not going to get us to do what we need to do.”

Dacko knows that she has a great group of players that will always have her back and she is anxious to see what the rest of the 2006-07 season is going to bring.

“Our kids, in the preseason last year, did a seven and a half week conditioning program that was very, very vigorous,” Dacko mentioned. “We just wanted to really impress upon [the players] that we don’t want to be in that situation this year.

“I look forward to getting on the floor with this team – a team that finished a strong year a year ago,” she continued. “We won eight out of our last 11 games, so I’m just looking forward to seeing if we can pick up where we left off, without skipping a beat.”

Basketball has brought Dacko all over the globe – from New England to the Ivy League to middle America and even to Australia and New Zealand when she was the assistant coach for a Big 10 All-Star Team – but she has made it abundantly clear that she does not want to pack her suitcases any time soon. She’s still got big plans for UMass women’s basketball in the immediate future as well as upcoming years.

“You know, I’d like to bring an A-10 winner here,” Dacca said. “I’d certainly like to build and establish a program where the best athletes in the state want to come here, the best athletes in New England want to come here and it’s the school in the East where you want to come. You’re looking at UConn and you’re looking at Boston College and everybody should be looking at UMass the same way.”