Legendary Waynesburg basketball coach Marisa dies
Observer-Reporter
Rudy Marisa, on the shoulders of his players, celebrates one of the Yellow Jackets’ seven NAIA District 18 basketball championships. Marisa had 565 career wins in 34 seasons with the Yellow Jackets.
Observer-Reporter
Rudy Marisa guided Waynesburg University’s basketball program as head coach for 34 years, compiling 565 wins.
Observer-Reporter
Rudy Marisa had an intense no-nonsense approach to coaching during his days at Waynesburg University, where he won 565 games and seven NAIA District 18 championships.
Rudy Marisa, the Fredericktown native who was a player on Penn State’s only Final Four team and as a coach turned Waynesburg University into a small college basketball national power, died Tuesday night. He was 89.
“It’s a sad day in Jacket Nation,” said Tim McConnell, who was a point guard on two teams at Waynesburg, an assistant under Marisa and is currently the head coach at Bishop Canevin High School.
“When I got a text from his son, Kameron, at 7 a.m. (Wednesday) morning saying that Rudy had passed, I was stunned. I remember Rudy being like a machine. I thought he would live forever.”
The memories, however, of Marisa and his Waynesburg teams will live on for those who saw them play and win at an amazing clip.
A rugged forward on Penn State’s 1953-54 team that produced a 18-6 record and advanced to the semifinals of the NCAA tournament, Marisa entered the coaching ranks at the high school level. He made stops at Dunbar Township and Albert Gallatin before leaving coaching to take a job as director of the Neighborhood Youth Corps for Fayette County. He remained in that position for two years and served one season as an assistant coach at Trinity High School before making the jump to the college ranks and becoming the head coach at Waynesburg in 1969.
At that time, there was little interest in basketball at Waynesburg, where the sport took a backseat to football and wrestling. Attendance at Waynesburg basketball games sometimes numbered in the single digits.
Marisa, however, utilized a system – fast-breaking offense with a zone defense – that brought unprecedented success to the Yellow Jackets. Marisa coached Waynesburg for 34 years, winning 565 games, making 18 NAIA District 18 playoff appearances and winning seven district titles, including six straight from 1984 through 1989. The 1987-88 team compiled a school-best 32-3 record and reached the NAIA semifinals in Kansas City, Mo. From 1980-89, Marisa guided the Yellow Jackets to a 217-58 cumulative record.
By the 1980s, the problem at Waynesburg wasn’t attracting fans. It was getting all of them in the gymnasium to see Marisa’s teams play. College Gym was eventually replaced by a larger fieldhouse, one that bears Marisa’s name, but the Yellow Jackets often played postseason games in front of standing-room-only crowds.
The keys to Marisa’s success, his former players say, was his attention to detail and a coaching style that rarely changed.
“Rudy cared about every little detail,” McConnell said. “He used to say that if you ignore one little thing and then another little thing, eventually you’re going to have one big problem.”
“Rudy was the most detailed person I have ever met,” said Ray Natili, who was a standout player at Immaculate Conception High School and Waynesburg and is currently one of the NCAA’s top basketball officials.
“Being that detail-oriented rubbed off on me and got me to where I am today in officiating. I’m detail-oriented because of Rudy.”
Darrin Walls, who is considered the best player Marisa ever recruited, said his coach was a stickler for discipline, but the lessons he taught have stuck with his players for decades.
“Rudy was tremendous. The discipline he instilled in me was remarkable. Everywhere I go, I try to be 15 minutes early. That was a Rudy thing,” Walls said. “I tried to teach my family the work ethic that Rudy taught and had. The last time I talked to him, I thanked him for the values and discipline that he instilled in me.”
After graduating from East Bethlehem High School, Marisa attended Penn State, where he participated in a tryout with about 150 other walk-on basketball players and made the Nittany Lions’ freshman team. Eventually he received an athletic scholarship.
“He didn’t talk much about his playing days, but I do recall him saying that he was just happy to have a scholarship to make his father proud,” Walls recalled.
Even with all his success in basketball, Marisa gained even more national attention when two of his sons, Kurt and Kent, were working at the Pentagon and World Trade Center, respectively, during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Both sons survived and the family’s ordeal that day was told nationally in newspapers and on television.
Marisa has a granddaughter, McKenna Marisa, who is the starting point guard for Penn State.
A complete obituary was not available at press time.