In March 2006, then-Brandeis guard Amanda DeMartino '06 celebrated the women's basketball team's first-ever NCAA Tournament win over Salem State College in the first round. Three years later she has come full circle, leading a team in the Salem State Tip-Off Tournament last weekend, not playing on the court but coaching from the sideline.DeMartino has just started her second season as the head coach of the Northwood University women's basketball team, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics school in Florida that is part of the Sun Conference. She joined Northwood as an assistant coach in the women's team's first year of existence right after graduating Brandeis in 2006. Since taking over as the head coach last year, DeMartino has worked with the likes of Northwood's men's basketball head coach, former NCAA Division I Champion Rollie Massimino.

"I thought it was exciting to be part of building a basketball program and to come and have the opportunity to work under Rollie Massimino. And I just thought it was the neatest thing to be able to build something from the ground up rather than walking into a program, really making it our own and trying to build it to be something special and successful which luckily it has become," DeMartino said.

Massimino was the men's basketball head coach for Villanova University in 1985 when the Wildcats became the lowest-seeded team at No. 8 to win the NCAA Championship. He recently put his current team in the spotlight with an upset victory over Division I Florida International University, handing FIU's new head coach, former NCAA Champion and NBA Hall of Fame player Isiah Thomas, his first loss in the exhibition match-up.

DeMartino was hired by former women's head coach John Thurston. She helped guide the team to an 18-13 record in its inaugural season,which earned it a trip to the semifinals of the Florida Sun Conference Women's Basketball Tournament.

DeMartino's athletic résumé would have been enough to get her a position as a basketball coach. As a player, she set the Judges' all-time record for assists and served as team captain for a club that reached its first-ever NCAA Tournament in her senior season. She is ranked in the top 10 on the Judges' all-time steals, 3-point shot percentage and 3-point shots made lists and was a member of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship-winning team in her sophomore season while also being named an All-University Athletic Association honoree three times.

"She was a very smart player. There are certain kids who play basketball, and then there are those who understand the game of it. She was one who understood the game," Brandeis women's head coach Carol Simon said. "She was an extension of a coach on the court and was one of the players that got this program to where it's at right now. . She didn't have to look over to me to ask what to run she just knew it. She knew other teams' strengths and weaknesses, what to call, when to call it, and she was talented player."

But according to DeMartino, the academic experience she had at Brandeis was just as significant in helping her get the job.

"[Thurston] really wanted to run the program like a high academic institution," DeMartino said. "We've had the highest team GPA in the athletic department the past three years, and so that was a big part in him hiring me was my Brandeis education. And the fact that I was a student athlete, but student first, and he really liked that whole concept of college athletics."

DeMartino interviewed for the head coaching position after Thurston left to become an assistant coach at Fordham University after his second season. The resignation of her boss was "a shock," she said, but she was thrilled for the opportunity it presented.

"She had to prove to me that she was ready to do it, and she came across very, very comfortable. Her character to me was terrific, because in a position like this, becoming a head coach at a very young age, you have to put yourself in a position to be successful, and the things that she said to me, I was obviously very impressed," Massimino, then-director of basketball operations at Northwood, said of DeMartino during the interview process.

In her first year as head coach last season, DeMartino led the team to a 25-5 record despite the fact that its top two scorers from the previous season had transferred. The squad also earned an appearance in the semifinals of the Sun Conference tournament after capturing the regular-season conference crown for the third straight season. This year she is off to a 2-2 start, losing to Rhode Island College in the finals of the Salem State Tournament last Sunday after defeating Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 68-65 last Saturday to advance to the final round of the tournament.

But despite her success at Northwood, DeMartino has not forgotten her Brandeis roots. She still keeps in touch with many former teammates and coaches, including a monthly conversation with Simon. In fact, DeMartino says she took some of the techniques she learned from Simon and carried them over to her experience as a head coach, including Simon's detailed scouting reports.

"I'd like to think since she came from a good program that she has a good team," Simon said. "As coaches you want to put your players in a [position] to win. We do it through different ways: video scouting, on-court [instruction] or detailed scouting reports. That's something I learned from my coach when I played so I guess it's just something that gets passed down."

DeMartino still has vivid memories of her playing days at Brandeis, specifically the celebration after her team won the ECAC tournament in her sophomore year. She said that one of the hardest parts of being a coach is learning that her new role is on the bench and not between the lines.

"I'm such a competitor; I always have been. I always put 110-percent effort into everything that I do, and the biggest thing being a coach is standing on the sidelines. Even today still in practice I want to get in the drills. I want to get there on the court and I want to be playing. I want be competing, running up and down the floor, but obviously it's not my time," DeMartino said.

But despite her competitive nature, her goals as a coach go beyond wins and losses.

"My biggest thing in anything that I do really as a coach, and of course I want to win and I'm super competitive, but at the end of the day for me it's about making sure that [my players] stay on the right path and they do what they need to do during their college years."

While DeMartino hopes to continue to bring a winning attitude and experience to her new team, she has the full support of an NCAA legend who knows a thing or two about striving for excellence.

"She's going to be a very successful basketball coach in years to come because she wants to learn," Massimino said. "Too many times people aren't interested in that, because they think they know more than they really know, and she's a happy-go-lucky, friendly young lady."



-Ian Cutler contributed reporting.