As she looks back on 25 years as Germantown Academy’s girls’ basketball coach, Sherri Retif has ‘a real sense of gratitude’

Sherri Retif remembers her first year as the girls’ basketball coach at Germantown Academy.

It was 1998, and the program already had talent and depth, but something else stuck with her.

Following a loss to Academy of Notre Dame De Namur, the Patriots cried tears of disappointment in the locker room. But an eighth-grader, Joey Rhoads, who later played at Penn, told the squad, “I know we’re all crying, but we have to remember this feeling and how much we don’t like it, so it doesn’t happen again.”

Retif recalled that moment as one that embodied the culture she aimed to establish throughout her coaching career.

“I tried to build off of the character, the value, and their passions for the game,” Retif said. “Everything from then on just kind of fell into place.”

After 25 seasons, Retif announced her retirement from coaching at Germantown Academy earlier this month. She’ll remain a member of the middle school faculty. The New Orleans native, who was a standout player at Tulane, has impacted a number of players throughout her career, some of whom extended their time to the collegiate level.

She compiled more than 700 wins in her career (539 at Germantown Academy), which includes 20 Inter-Academic League championships and four PAISAA championships. The most recent was in 2019, when the team broke into MaxPreps’ top 25 high school girls’ basketball rankings.

This past year, however, Retif felt ready for a change. She broached the topic to assistant coach Jim Roynan during a practice, when he suggested to focus on a drill for next season. Retif smiled before saying, “I’m not sure there’s going to be a next year.”

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Retif wanted to spend time with her family, especially her granddaughter, who’s 10 years old and recently started playing basketball at Holy Child School at Rosemont.

“I was blessed because I had wonderful role models growing up,” Retif said. “That was the key reason I decided to move forward and give up coaching is that I have a granddaughter. ... I kept getting text messages or video clips of her playing, and I knew I was ready to make a shift.”

Growing up, Retif was grateful to have parents who helped create opportunities for her to play basketball. When Title IX was signed into law in 1972, Retif, then a senior in high school, received a basketball scholarship at Tulane.

She had the chance to play on an international stage at the Pan American Games. Retif and now-LSU coach Kim Mulkey, who won the Tigers’ first women’s basketball national championship this season, represented Louisiana.

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Retif, who was inducted into Tulane’s Hall of Fame as a player, earned her degree in education and started coaching high school basketball at Ursuline Academy, which was about four blocks away from campus.

After she was at Ursuline for eight years, Retif’s husband was offered a job in Philadelphia. She, along with her two sons, Bender and Cameron, made the move from the town she’d known her whole life to the City of Brotherly Love.

“It was a really hard adjustment,” said Retif, who first coached at Sun Valley High School. “My horizons were pretty small. That was a hard goodbye. In fact, when we moved to Philadelphia, I just thought I was done coaching, and I remember my husband encouraged me.”

She wanted to stay home and raise her two kids. But Retif still hopped around as a volunteer coach for AAU teams, including the Philadelphia Belles. A player on the team attended Germantown Academy and mentioned that the girls’ head coaching position opened at the school. Once Retif’s husband found out, she said, he couldn’t help but jump on the possibility for her.

“My husband sent my resumé,” Retif added. “I was like, ‘Wait, you did what?’ Just all the doors seemed to open up for me as I moved through the process of being a parent, being a teacher, and being a coach. I followed my heart.”

Retif had an impact on many players within the Patriots program, and some are continuing that cycle as college coaches.

To name a few: Laura Kurz, a 2004 graduate who played at Duke and Villanova, is an assistant coach at Drexel; Caroline Doty, a 2007 graduate who played at UConn, is an assistant coach at Wisconsin; and former WNBA player Maggie Lucas, a 2010 graduate and a McDonald’s All American who played at Penn State, rejoined the Nittany Lions program this year as an assistant coach.

“She coaches with love, with positivity, and she’s tough when she has to be,” Lucas said. “That’s how she carries herself. There’s a reason that Sherri is one of my greatest mentors. She’s one of my favorite people, and I’ve never lost touch with her through my entire career.”

Lucas is Retif’s only player to be named a McDonald’s All American. The two remember the day when Lucas found out she was going to the game. The Patriots beat Archbishop Wood, 72-61, Lucas scored her 2,000th point, and Retif received her 500th career coaching victory.

“I still joke it’s the best day in my life,” Lucas said. “We had this incredible comeback. We were down 20 points going into the fourth quarter. … I think it’s super telling [of] our connection. It was just a very big moment for the two of us.”

The guard, who had an eight-year professional career that included four seasons in the WNBA, credits Retif with teaching her how to control her emotions and developing patience.

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When an injury put Lucas’ playing career on hold, Retif brought her in as an assistant coach. It was Lucas’ first time coaching, but she said helping young girls learn the game — while teaching life lessons along the way — was inspirational.

“I wouldn’t be where I am now if it weren’t for Sherri,” Lucas said. “She gave me everything. She never stopped investing in me. She’s always there for me. ... At the end of my career, I want to have a legacy that I can be proud of and that’s exactly what Sherri has.”

When it comes to her legacy, Retif credits her students. She said coaching has taught her the greatest gift one could learn: a sense of gratitude for the chance to help others grow.

“I’m just appreciative of being able to merge my gifts for coaching with the gifts of talent,” she added. “I have a real sense of gratitude for all the opportunities and the doors that opened up along my path.”