Germantown Academy coach balances many interests

Germantown Academy's Sherri Retif thought she was done with basketball coaching after her two sons, Bender, 20, and Cameron, now a sophomore at the school, were born. She wanted to stay home and raise them. Fortunately for the Patriots she never gave up coaching, though she did take a few breaks.

In fact, she has learned to balance many activities and interests - being a wife and mother, teacher, counselor and student - with her coaching duties.

So, while going through what she calls the toughest schedule stretch of her 12 years as the Patriot girls' coach, Retif got a chance to take a breather and do a little celebrating this week. On Wednesday the Patriots presented her with her 500th career coaching victory. No. 500 was a 72-61 win Wednesday over Archbishop Wood in which one of her standout players over the years, Maggie Lucas, scored her 2,000th point.

"I've been married for 26 years and coaching for 24," said Retif, who credits her husband, Stanley, with getting her back into coaching earlier in her career.

A standout basketball player at Tulane University in her native New Orleans, she started coaching at the high school level at Ursuline Academy there. Her high school, Mercy Academy, Tulane and Ursuline were within four blocks of each other.

A job change for her husband brought them to this area. She spent four years at Sun Valley as a coach before deciding to stop again. She was also coaching AAU ball.

"I don't think she had any intention of teaching after leaving Sun Valley but one of her AAU players said Germantown Academy was looking for a coach.

"She's very passionate and very talented as a coach and a great role model for the girls," said Stanley Retif. "She very much into the whole person."

That is evident in the master's degree in holistic spirituality she recently earned from Chestnut Hill College. She is working on a doctorate from Fordham in the same area of study. She conducts classes in spirituality at several churches and in her Drexel Hill home.

Don't ask her if she keeps tabs on her won-lost record, however.

"She used to put her record on a game-day flyer she does," said her husband, "but she thought that was gaudy."

If nobody was going to keep it, her husband thought he should.

"Somebody needed to do it," he said.

Retif was at dinner with her husband and a longtime friend, DePaul women's coach Doug Bruno, when she got an indication of how close she was to her 500th win. The 11-time Inter-Academic League defending champion Patriots, 16-3 and ranked No. 1 by The Inquirer, missed a chance to win No. 500 when they bowed to Peddie School, 79-60, on Sunday.

"[Bruno] commented that he was sorry to have missed her 500th win, although she hadn't gotten it yet," her husband said. "He let the cat out of the bag."

Today, the Patriots play Seton Keough (Md.) before facing The Inquirer's No. 2 team, Archbishop Carroll, tomorrow and Hun School on Feb. 6.