Grentz, Foley reunite to take the reins at Lafayette

Theresa Grentz, a head women's basketball coach for 33 years through the 2007 season, returned to coaching after a seven-year absence last season and served as an assistant at Lafayette before being named the head coach in April.

Now a similar situation has occurred on her staff. Kristen Foley, the former head coach at Drexel and Temple, has returned to serve as an assistant after a long hiatus from coaching.

Foley was named earlier in the month as one of Grentz's assistants at Lafayette. She will be joining holdover assistants C.K. Calhoun and Ross James.

Foley was most recently the senior associate athletic director and senior woman's administrator at Temple.

Her long relationship in working with Grentz was a major factor in Foley's return to coaching.

Foley played for Grentz at Rutgers and helped the team to the NCAA Elite Eight as a junior and senior in 1986 and 1987. A member of the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame, Foley later became an assistant coach at Rutgers under Grentz for three seasons before becoming the head coach at Drexel in 1992. She then started a five-year stint as Temple's head coach in 1995 that ended in the 1999-2000 season. Since then she has been in administration.

"I played for her, coached with her at Rutgers and this is an amazing opportunity to work with her again," Foley said in a phone interview. "She is an innovator, master motivator and thinks out of the box every minute of the day."

Grentz, the Cardinal O'Hara graduate and a three-time all-American and national champion at Immaculata, is 671-311 in her 33 years as a head coach. Her career began at St. Joseph's, where she stayed two seasons and then to Rutgers, where she coached 19 and finally 12 more at Illinois.

After the 2006-07 season, she worked as the vice president for university advancement at Immaculata and also provided commentary on the Big Ten Network.

In April 2012, she founded Grentz Elite Coaching, a private academy.

She returned last season as an assistant for a Lafayette team that went 14-17 and 6-12 in the Patriot League. Grentz, who took the job after Dianne Nolan retired in March, decided to return to the head coaching ranks for the simplest of reasons.

"I have a talent to teach and I enjoy that," Grentz said by phone.

She said her one year as an assistant convinced her that she would like to continue coaching at Lafayette.

"That was a fun role and I thoroughly enjoyed it," Grentz said. "If I had not enjoyed it so much, I definitely would not have returned."

She didn't want to put any pressure on Foley to also return, but let her know how much she wanted her on her staff.

"What she will be able to bring is a sense of calm a sense of purpose, a sense of dignity," Grentz said. ". . . Kristen was an academic all-American and an all-American player and that combination is something I thought would be priceless and so valuable."

@sjnard