For years, Marist students have tried to bring a women’s club basketball team to campus without success. While Marist has always had a range of club sports, women’s basketball was among those that remained absent.
When looking at colleges, sophomores Charley Coward and Jillian Festa wanted to go to a school that had a club basketball team. Both Coward and Festa played basketball competitively in high school, and valued the feeling of being part of a team.
Since there was no official team at Marist, Coward and Festa decided that would be their mission for their freshman year. While they knew about intramural basketball, which would provide them with an opportunity to play the sport they loved, they wanted more out of it.
A club team would mean structure and competition, what they both craved. Festa saw basketball in Coward’s Instagram profile, and reached out first, wondering if she would want to start a club team together. They stayed in contact all summer before arriving as freshmen in August of 2025.
Jillian recalled Charley texting her on move in day and thinking, “We’re really starting this now.”
Once they had fully settled in, they had to figure out their next steps. First, they talked to Stephen D’Alessandro, the assistant athletic director and director of club sports, to see if their idea was feasible. After learning what it would entail, they began the long process of getting the club team officially chartered.
Intramural sports became a pipeline that helped them recruit players. Coward and Festa played on an intramural team, and after games, would ask their opponents to come to practices in hopes that they would want to eventually join a club team and play in more competitive games. Even before getting approved, they would try to run unofficial practices once or twice a week, depending on availability and barring busier times like finals or breaks.
At first, the hardest part was getting players to consistently show up to practices. Their first unofficial practice had about 15 people show up, but as the year went on, those numbers declined, which posed a challenge for the eager freshmen.
“We would have 7-10 girls almost every time,” Coward said about the unofficial practices held throughout the year.
To get people to show up, they told their friends and classmates about the practices as well as communicating through posts on Instagram. As freshmen, it was difficult to reach out to upperclassmen about coming to a practice because they hadn’t formed those connections yet.
Another prerequisite on the path to club chartering was to create bylaws for the club, as well as a budget spreadsheet. In addition to all of that, the biggest part of getting the club approved was proving that there was enough interest and enough attendance at the practices to sustain a club team.
Then, they had three separate presentations to do. The first was to D’Alessandro to see if the club could be a possibility. The second was to the Board of Athletics, which was approved, and the final was to Marist’s Student Government Association, which was also ultimately approved.
Once that was finalized, they had to reach out to the NCBBA — the National Club Basketball Association — to see if they could join the league and find a conference to play in. When that got approved, originally, they were put in the New England West conference. After some scheduling conflicts, they got moved to the New England South conference.
Entering their first full year as an official club team, they began by holding tryouts and establishing an official roster. They had around 18 players come to tryouts and cut down to 13 players.
Coward and Festa aim to hold two practices a week, on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and will play conference games on the weekends as well as nonconference games when possible.
This year, the team is operating without a coach. They are hopeful that by next season they will find someone, but for the time being, Coward and Festa are acting as coaches — drawing up practice plans, dealing with substitutions and keeping their team engaged.
“It hasn’t been that bad, honestly,” Coward said.
The two have a little extra time before practices to come up with what they will do, but they feel it is a worthy sacrifice of their time for something they are so passionate about.
Oct. 4 marked their first scrimmage, against Adelphi. Neither had played on a competitive team since high school; the feeling of being back on the court in a competitive setting was a feeling that Coward describes as something she had missed dearly.
For that scrimmage, Coward had high expectations since it was their first one as a club, eager to remember the feeling of playing on a team and supporting each other.
“It was so much better than I could even have imagined,” said Coward.
They built the club from the ground up, learning and evolving along the way. Winning the scrimmage was just the cherry on top of a challenging, yet rewarding year. Now, women’s club basketball is here to stay, with Coward and Festa setting the foundation for the future.
Edited by Hayden Shapiro and August Lieberman
Photo from Charley Coward and Jillian Festa
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