Stephanie Gaitley
	Position: Head Coach Experience: 2nd Year at Fordham Alma Mater: Villanova '82

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In just two short seasons at Rose Hill, Stephanie Gaitley has taken the Fordham women's basketball team from perennial doormat to the cusp of an Atlantic 10 title.

After compiling a 12-18 record in her first season at Fordham, Gaitley entered her second campaign with a few key additions. With Marah Strickland and Erin Rooney finally ready to play and star recruit Samantha Clark in maroon and white, Gaitley had all the pieces that the 27th year head coach would need to put together an historic campaign.

Gaitley's Fordham squad put up the best record the program had seen in over 30 years, finishing the season 26-9 and falling in the Atlantic 10 title game by just one point to Saint Joe's. Earning a berth in the WNIT, Fordham advanced to the Round of 16, picking up the school's first postseason victories since 1980.

Playing her signature style of smart, yet aggressive defense, Gaitley's team finished the season ranked first in the Atlantic 10 and 16th in the nation in scoring defense. The 2012-2013 Rams also finished the year ranked 15th in the country in free throw percentage.

Gaitley, who led Monmouth University to 23 wins and a WNIT appearance in 2011, was named head coach at Fordham University on April 1, 2011 and set out to begin a new chapter in the Rams' women's basketball program, a chapter marked by hard work, an international flavor, a stifling defense and an emphasis on family values.

Gaitley, who is the all-time winningest coach at three different schools, arrived at Rose Hill with extensive experience as a head coach, including a stint in the Atlantic 10, guiding teams at Monmouth, Long Island University, Saint Joseph's University and the University of Richmond over a 25-year span. She compiled a 464-270 career record (.630 winning percentage) over that time, including 12 20-win seasons.

Gaitley coached three players who earned conference Player of the Year accolades including Long Island's Valerie Nainima, who was the first player in Northeast Conference history to win the league's Rookie and Player of the Year honors in the same season when she accomplished the feat in 2007. The other two are Jana Lichnerova and Susan Moran, the 2000 and 2002 Atlantic 10 Player of the Year at Saint Joseph's, respectively. Both Lichnerova and Moran were also named Atlantic 10 Student-Athletes of the Year for women's basketball.

Nainima, a member of the Fiji women's national basketball team, Lichnerova, who played for the Slovakia Olympic Team at the 2000 Games, and Moran, one of the top women's basketball players from Ireland, are a good example of Gaitley's international roots that have served her so well in her career. Gaitley has had three of her former international players either drafted or in camp with WNBA teams, and has conducted SVG camps all over the world for the past 20 years.

Gaitley also has experience with the United States national team, serving as an assistant in 2000 at the Jones Cup and helping the team to the gold medal. She also served as coach of the West Team at the 1995 U.S. Olympic Festival, winning a silver medal.

An underlying theme for Gaitley-coached teams has been an unyielding defense, as evidence by her Blackbirds squad that led the Northeast Conference in scoring defense from 2006-08, including holding the opposition to 54.8 points per game in 2007-08. In fact, from 1989-2000, Coach Gaitley's teams ranked in the top-10 in the nation in scoring defense nine times.

One of the most apparent attributes about Coach Gaitley is her likeable demeanor strongly influenced by family values. Gaitley has an outgoing personality that is contagious throughout her program. She has maintained a longstanding, successful career based around her attitude and ability to convey her beliefs as a coach and as a mentor to her players.

In 2010-11, Gaitley led Monmouth to a 23-10 overall record, 13-5 in the Northeast Conference, and helped the Hawks tie the school record for wins in a season and advance to the title game of the NEC Championship. Following the championship game loss, Monmouth received its first ever WNIT bid and its first postseason appearance since making the 1983 NCAA Tournament.

Gaitley spent three seasons at Monmouth, recording a winning slate each year. She accomplished this with her trademark tough defense, allowing fewer than 60 points per game each year, including an NEC-best 55.7 in 2010-11.

Gaitley's Monmouth teams also were successful in the classroom, with the 2009-10 squad honored by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) as one of the top academic squads in the nation. The Hawks ranked 15th in the country with a 3.4 team GPA in the WBCA's annual Academic Top 25 Team Honor Roll, which is based on the highest grade point averages (GPA) for the entire season.

Prior to her three years at Monmouth, Gaitley served as the head coach at Long Island University for six seasons, accumulating a 95-82 record at the helm of the program. She left the Brooklyn school as the winningest coach in LIU women's basketball history. In her final season at the school, 2007-08, she guided the Blackbirds to a school-record 24 wins and the top seed in the Northeast Conference Tournament. In her time in Brooklyn, she led LIU to a pair of 20-win seasons, the first NEC Regular Season title and first WNIT bid in program history and was named the 2006-07 NEC Coach of the Year.

Prior to her stint with Long Island, Gaitley was the head coach at Saint Joseph's in Philadelphia, Pa. for ten seasons (1992-01). She led the Hawks to five 20-win seasons and two Atlantic 10 Championships in her time there while earning five NCAA Tournament bids, including three at-large berths. Her teams advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament three times and she earned both a preseason and postseason WNIT bid. She led the Hawks to a 196-88 mark in her ten years in Philadelphia, 109-39 in the A-10, and currently sits as the second-winningest coach in school history. Her 109 Atlantic 10 wins is third all-time among the all-time conference coaches and her .737 winning percentage is seventh best.

In 1992-93, Gaitley's second season with Saint Joseph's, she went 21-8, which kick-started a run of qualifying for the NCAA Tournament in three of the next four years. Gaitley's teams in 1993-94 and 1994-95 went a combined 39-18 at Saint Joseph's. Her teams qualified for the NCAA Tournament in each season, and her 1999-2000 team went 25-6 and won the Atlantic 10 Conference Championship.

Gaitley got her start as a head coach at the University of Richmond from 1985-1991 where she compiled a 116-63 record, the most wins for any Richmond women's basketball coach, while winning 20 or more games in a season four times. During her last two seasons with the Spiders, she went a combined 51-10 and won the Colonial Athletic Association Championship each season while advancing to the NCAA Tournament in both years. Gaitley was named the CAA Coach of the Year in 1989-90 and also led the Spiders to a WNIT bid.

A native of Ocean City, N.J., Gaitley graduated from Villanova in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science degree in education and was an academic All-American that season. She was named to the Eastman Kodak All-America Team in 1981-82 and is currently sixth on the Villanova all-time rebounding list. She also received a Master of Science degree in secondary education at Villanova in 1983. The school inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 1993, three years after she was enshrined into the Philadelphia Big Five Hall of Fame.

Gaitley and her two sisters, Courtney and Coco, hold a piece of NCAA history. During the 1981-82 season, Stephanie and Courtney, while playing for Villanova, played against Coco, who played for FDU, marking the first time in NCAA history that three sisters competed in the same game.

Gaitley learned early on in her basketball career about success as she was a member of the Ocean City High School girl's basketball team that went 100-0 in league play from 1974-78 under head coach Pat Dougherty. She is a member of the South Jersey and Ocean City High School Halls of Fame.

Gaitley and her husband, Frank, have three sons, Dutch (25) video coordinator for the Lehigh men's team, D.C. (20), a member of the men's team at Fordham and Jordan "Coop" Gaitley (14).

"After an extensive national search, we are excited to find someone like Stephanie Gaitley to lead our women's basketball program," said former Fordham Executive Director of Athletic Frank McLaughlin at her introductory press conference. "She has been a winner and has always had a conference-championship caliber team. Not only has Stephanie had great success on the court, she has always emphasized academic success and the full development of the student-athlete. Her outstanding coaching career makes a strong statement that Fordham is very serious about becoming one of the top women's basketball programs in the very competitive Atlantic 10 Conference."