Editors Note: Teri Mariani will retire at the end of May after 32 years of service to Portland State Athletics. The first 29 years Mariani served as the Vikings softball coach, and a department administrator. After retiring from coaching three years ago, Mariani has worked in athletic administration exclusively, including a 14-month stint as the interim Athletic Director. The athletics program will recognize Mariani for her 32 years of service on May 27 with a reception at the Native American Center on the PSU campus. The event runs from 4:30-6 p.m. and the public is welcome.

If you want to see Teri Mariani’s eyes light up, get her talking about her 32-year career as softball coach and administrator with the PSU athletic department (which may make her the longest surviving athletic department member at any state-supported institution of higher education in the state).

Officially, Mariani retires from her job as special assistant to the Athletic Director at the end of May. And that is just her most recent title. She has been the head softball coach (29 years), staff member, interim athletic director (twice), senior woman administrator, mentor and friend to a long line of people who have passed through PSU’s athletic department during her time there.

As a coach and athlete, the recognition has been significant on all levels: Mariani is a member of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, Portland State Athletics Hall of Fame, and Portland Metropolitan Softball Association Hall of Fame, among other innumerable honors.

“She’s been the heart and soul of the program, a pillar of consistency in a program that’s seen a lot of change. As a coach, she’s the type of coach committed not just to building a competitive sport but to building the entire program,” said Athletic Director Torre Chisholm, who has benefited from Mariani’s campus contacts and historical perspective during his first year on the job.

When answering the question What has Teri Mariani meant to the PSU athletic program?, Mike Lund, sports information director for the last 19 years said: “It’s simple. She’s meant everything. Everyone knows that she’s been the driving force behind everything. She has a spirit that rubs off on everyone. With all the challenges we’ve had, she’s understood and dealt with them better than anyone.”

To Mariani, her greatest contribution has been a team approach to the department and staff and her dedication.

“I’ve always put the department and the university before my personal wants (in fact, one benefit of retirement is “that my family can now have birthdays, weddings and other family events on their schedule, not worked in around mine”). I’ve been supportive of the needs of all sports. I hope people have appreciated my team approach to the department and to the staff,” she said.

A three-sport athlete (basketball, volleyball and softball) at St. Mary’s Academy, adjacent to the PSU campus, Mariani continued with those sports when she enrolled at PSU in 1970.

She chose to concentrate mostly on softball because “height doesn’t matter as much. Being a short person, I thought I had a better chance at being successful in softball.” And successful she was, playing for awhile after graduation with the Erv Lind Florists, a professional team which toured the country.

Mariani really enjoyed softball as a sport.

“From a playing standpoint, it combined the social collegiality of a team with the challenges of an individual sport. If I were batting, it was up to me...but it had the bonus of being a team sport. It’s the perfect mix. It’s played outside and, most of the time, the weather is nice. I guess that’s why I’m a fair weather golfer,” she said.

Mariani began her working career in PSU athletics as a student, helping with some administrative details on a chronically short-handed staff.

“When I started, it was me, Roy Love (Athletic Director and another PSU alum), Larry Sellers, (sport information director--now retired) and Darlene Brady (secretary and all-around assistant). That was it,” she recalled.

She actually started coaching softball to make a little extra money, while keeping her eye on the bigger departmental picture and the uncertainties of collegiate athletic departments.

“I’ve done about everything there is to do around the department. By doing everything, I made myself valuable enough that they didn’t want to lose me. I knew that if they dropped softball, they’d still want me around because I knew how to do so much stuff,” she said only half joking.

Her heart had always been in coaching, though, and she earned a General Studies degree with a PE major to that end. She briefly considered teaching, but chose coaching “because there’s a lot of teaching, but the students who are there want to be there. I have all the respect in the world for teachers because that’s a really hard job.”

There were many highlights to her coaching career, the biggest probably being the 1991 Division II softball finals in Midland, Michigan where her team came in third, winning the first game and losing the last two in 16 and nine innings.

She’s seen a lot of “really special players” and has particularly enjoyed “watching people come to PSU as freshmen and seeing how much they’ve grown as a person, not just as an athlete, in their four or five years here.”

She rates development of the PSU campus as the major change during her time.

As a student and when she first began coaching, “there were cars running through campus. Now it has the look of a campus. Rather than cars, we now have a mall where there are noon-hour concerts and where you can sit and talk,” she said.

As the campus atmosphere has developed, it has made a big difference to the athletes she’s recruited. Recruits now like the feel of the campus. They feel more like they belong to a campus. The atmosphere lends itself to more social interests for students and staff members. Everyone enjoys the experience more.

As to her legacy, Mariani points to raising funds for and physically designing the athletic weight room, her role in getting the community recreation field adjacent to Stott center underway and lighted and, of course, the hiring of head football Coach Jerry Glanville, which she accomplished during her second tour of duty as interim athletic director.

Over the years, she’s labored under a number of university presidents, all supportive in one way or another of the PSU athletic program. Still, Joe Blumel (for his support of women’s sports), Judith Ramaley (who sat through three regional tournament games here on a cold and damp afternoon—“that meant a lot to the kids”) and Dan Bernstine (“what can I say about Dan. When he asked me to take the interim AD job again, how could I say ‘no’ to him”).

And there’ve been plenty of challenges: Like her softball team having to practice on church blacktop lots during rainy weather. Like not having enough people to handle the day-to-day activities of the athletic department (“during my second tour as interim AD, we were down to four full time staff”). Like continually having to make short funding go farther than anyone could have imagined (“This institution gets more bang for the buck than most, not just in athletics, but all over the campus.”).

Although Mariani has friends throughout the PSU campus, she said there still are too many people who don’t understand what an athletics program brings to the campus.

“We have to justify ourselves more than we should. While that’s probably true on many campuses, it’s exaggerated here because we’re in an urban environment. An athletic program is the front porch of the institution. Rightly or wrongly, people in Nebraska know about PSU because of our basketball this year. That brings students and donors and, while donors may begin giving to athletics, they often move on to support other areas of the school,” she said.

Although Mariani doesn’t plan on disappearing, (she’ll still work the sports internet broadcasts and help around the press box), she will miss the people with whom she’s worked on a day-to-day basis.

“I’ll miss the people most. That’s what got me coming to work every day. There’ve been very few days in 32 years that I didn’t want to come to work. The advice I’d give to young people is ‘never take a job just for money. Enjoying the people is important. You have to put a value on that. I love the people throughout this campus.”

And, said Lund, probably speaking for a large crowd of people, even though she’s not coaching anymore, “there is still a lot of Teri Mariani in northwest softball—because of the current coaches who once played for her and because of her spirit and integrity. Just like here, a lot of Teri will remain after she’s retired. I’m proud to have had a chance to know and work with her. But, more importantly, I’m proud to call her a friend.”