When the WNBA’s Washington Mystics won the national title on Thursday against the Connecticut Sun, 89 to 78, it was the first championship in the team’s history! But it was not the first championship for its assistant coach, Marianne Crawford Stanley ’76.
Winning two national championships as a collegiate player for the Immaculata Mighty Macs, she also helped the team place second in her junior and senior year. From there, Stanley went on to earn three national titles as head coach for Old Dominion University. Stanley continued coaching, going to the Final Four in 1996 with Stanford University. She switched between coaching at the collegiate level and at the professional level when she became the head coach of the Washington Mystics. During her coaching career, she served as assistant coach for the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks and coached at the University of California, Berkeley and Rutgers University.
The Immaculata University community congratulates Marianne, and the entire Washington Mystics organization, for winning the 2019 WNBA Championship.