The place to be on a cold winter night in Greene County in the 1970s and ‘80s was the gymnasium on the campus of Waynesburg College. The warmth and bright lights welcomed guests as they pushed through the crowd to catch a glimpse of the action.  

Echoing throughout the room were the sounds of athletes running up and down the court in pursuit of a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) championship.  

Leading the charge was a man of high standards when it came to winning and his attention to detail, giving commands to his players like a general to his soldiers. He was a man who did not view losses as a weak point, but rather a way to learn and build off. That man was none other than Rudy Marisa. 

“No one exemplified Waynesburg University athletics like Rudy Marisa,” sports information director Bobby Fox said.  

25 years ago, Rudy Marisa was forever enshrined at Waynesburg by having the field house named in his honor. 

“It was well deserved,” Kameron Marisa, one of the famed coach’s sons, said. “We were extremely honored by the university for doing this and flattered by the university and we were excited for dad. In this day in age, it is very difficult to get a building named after you.” 

Wrestling and football defined athletics at Waynesburg College in the 1960s. And so, basketball during that time would see single digit attendance. Marisa became the head coach for Waynesburg in 1969. 

Marisa put Waynesburg on the map for basketball by using a fast-breaking offense coupled with a strong zone defense.  

This structure of play helped the Yellow Jackets win seven district titles with six being in a row from 1984 to 1989. The most notable year was the 1987-88 team that went 32-3 and made it to the NAIA Final four. 

“It was a compelling, powerful experience going on here at that time,” Chairperson for the Department of Communication Richard Krause said. “The players had tremendous respect for him. They really admire the way he ran the program and who he was as a man.” 

As the steel mills closed and unemployment rose with the crime rate in Pittsburgh, Marisa would go into the city league looking for players and recruit them for the team. 

“He was not scared to go into the inner-city league,” Fox said. “He treated his players with a lot of respect, treated them like men. He earned a lot of respect from the players.” 

In the fall of 2000, President Chancellor Timothy R. Thyreen announced that the field house would be dedicated to him. On Saturday, Jan. 27, before a home basketball game against Bethany College, a plaque was unveiled officially naming the basketball arena after him. 

“We were probably a little rowdy that day,” Fox said, “President Thyreen got everything in order and made the presentation to Marisa. That day was appropriate and very well deserved for a guy who did so much on the court and a great ambassador off court as well.” 

Coach Marisa would hold summer camps for the kids in the area. He was also an active member of a local church in the borough of Waynesburg and helped in the community. 

“Before coming to Waynesburg, I knew him from his summer camps,” Fox said. “I went to at least one of his basketball camps. They were grueling camps. He was definitely an old school type of coach, but it helped a lot of younger individuals. He was also a big contributor to community events here.” 

As a freshman at Penn State, Marisa attended an open tryout for the basketball team in 1952. Out of the 150 students who were there, Marisa was one of the few to have made the cut and eventually received an athletic scholarship as well. He was later a part of Penn State’s Final Four team in 1954. 

“Coming from a small town and going to Penn State was a revelation to him. That there was another world out there,” Kameron Marisa said. “He had to work harder than everybody else to accomplish what he did. He made the best of it.” 

Rudy Marisa was also the athletic director when Waynesburg went from NAIA to NCAA Division III and also when Waynesburg became a member of the Presidents’ Athletic Conference. 

In April of 2024, Waynesburg University Athletics announced the reaction of the “Rudy Marisa Memorial Endowed Fund” to support the Waynesburg University men’s basketball team. 

After 34 years as head coach, Rudy Marisa retired with the team before the 2003 season. He finished with 565 wins and, at the time of his retirement, was ranked 17th in wins among all active NCAA coaches. He ranked in the top 10 in Division III coaching wins at the time of his retirement. He was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 1996 and later into the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame in 2015. 

“The naming of the Fieldhouse is special,” Rudy Marisa explained in an interview for the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame in 2015. “That’s a legacy that I leave behind. I can’t think of a thing that I would change or could have changed. I’m satisfied with the things that have happened to me and very pleased, I have no complaints.”