At Marcellus Senior High School in Marcellus, NY, Katrina Ercole (‘86) has a spot on the girls’ varsity basketball bench as an assistant coach.
She is familiar with what it takes to play basketball at a high level. Ercole competed during one of Villanova women’s basketball’s best four-year stretches ever. Now, 40 years later, she has returned to the sport on the coaching end.
Ercole’s freshman season was the first year Villanova women’s basketball moved into the Big East Conference.
By the time she graduated from Villanova in 1986, the women’s basketball program had won a Big East Championship and two Big East regular season titles.
Ercole graduated from the Villanova School of Business with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. She spent almost nine years in the business field at Prudential Insurance and Stevens Office Interiors.
Since then, Ercole has spent 21 years as a fourth and fifth-grade educator in the Marcellus Central School District in Marcellus, NY.
“I wanted to go to school to get a business degree, and I knew Villanova had a good business program,” Ercole said. “It was a Division I program [for basketball]. I came to visit and, really, I liked the people. I liked the team. The campus obviously sells itself and just felt like the right place to go, not only from my education, but to be able to play basketball for four years.”
Ercole also noted that attending Villanova is “belonging to something bigger than yourself,” a sentiment commonly shared amongst Villanovans.
Ercole’s time as a Wildcat was spent under former head coach Harry Perretta, who was the head coach of the Wildcats until 2020 when he retired. Denise Dillon took over his role as head coach.
“Yeah, [Perretta’s] just a great coach,” Ercole said. “He is such a basketball mind. He really understands the game incredibly well, and, I mean, it was just such a privilege to play for him.”
Outside of basketball, he’s just an amazing person. He would do anything for any one of his players. He is just a truly kind and caring person.”
Ercole’s senior season was the first time the Villanova women’s basketball program won the Big East Tournament, and the second time in program history that it made an NCAA Tournament appearance.
After her graduation from Villanova, Ercole began her career at Macy’s as a receiving manager. A few years later, in August 1988, she began her work at Prudential Insurance.
Ercole’s role at Prudential involved building management, operations-type work and changes with its rental locations around the Northeast region.
Her career as a business professional wrapped up at Stevens Office in Syracuse, NY, where she was a product manager.
Once Ercole had her children William (30) and Michael (27), with her husband, Paul Ercole, her path in life started to shift.
“I then stayed home with the kids for seven years,” Ercole said. “And while I was home with the kids, I went back and got my master’s in elementary education [at LeMoyne]. And I’ve been teaching fourth and fifth grade now for the last 21 years.”
Something that holds true for majority of Villanova alumni is that they cannot stay away from their alma mater. Ercole has been a longtime member of the Villanova University Alumni Association (VUAA). She spent 13 years on the VUAA’s board, and from 2012 to 2014, she served as the president.
“It was like a whole second opportunity to connect with the Villanova people and people that are now some of my closest friends,” Ercole said. “I never would have met them had I not been on the board. People of all different ages graduating classes, some who have celebrated their 50th reunion, and some of whom have been out only for maybe 15 or 20 years.”
More often than not, attending Villanova is for a lifetime, not just for four years. And Ercole has chosen to adopt that very mentality.
