Editor’s note: Alabama State’s Lewis Jackson and Freda Freeman-Jackson were previously married coaches at the same school. A previous version of this story said Vermont’s coaches were believed to be the first at the D-I level.
On the eve of her husband’s 58th birthday, Maureen Magarity chased a sliver of normalcy. She and her daughters sneaked out of the house and returned with a birthday banner, balloons and an attempt to pin a familiar moment onto days that hadn’t left much room for one.
The next morning, Charlotte and Caroline woke up with one question: Where would the celebratory dinner be?
The answer kept slipping. The honoree, Vermont men’s basketball coach John Becker, was already busy that night with a recruiting dinner. The following day, Magarity had her own recruiting dinner — as the newly named women’s basketball coach at Vermont.
And so, Becker’s birthday was temporarily set aside by a household now governed by the overlapping demands of two Division I programs. Magarity, 45, was named the Catamounts head coach on April 13, becoming counterpart to her husband, who has led the men’s program since 2011.
“I think that’s just maybe a little foreshadowing of what’s to come for us,” Magarity said.
Days into Magarity’s return to coaching, the couple, who got married just last year, is falling into a new rhythm: practices to schedule, recruits to host, two programs operating a hallway apart.
Their personal and professional lives are now unfolding in tandem, with Magarity and Becker a Division I basketball rarity — a husband and wife at the helm of programs in the same building, chasing what they believe could be “the best part of their lives.”
“It’s a little bit of passing ships in the night sort of thing,” Becker said of the demands since Magarity’s hiring, “getting to debrief each other, after we put the kids to bed, be able to pour a glass of wine and review our days.”
For years, their parallel paths never overlapped enough to require this level of coordination.
Magarity and Becker met through working in the America East, steadily building a friendship through annual league meetings while she was head coach at New Hampshire and he was entrenched at Vermont. Both had endured divorces around the same period — and their relationship evolved gradually until a dinner in 2019 with mutual friends officially kick-started their relationship: “That’s when I guess you could say we had sparks,” Magarity said.
It bolstered their friendship that former Vermont women’s coach Alisa Kresge is Magarity’s best friend and former teammate at Marist from 2003-04 and was Becker’s colleague in Burlington. Magarity’s next stop at Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass., stretched the distance between the pair further, creating a cadence they grew accustomed to: long drives and more time apart than together.
“We both missed a lot of important moments in each other’s lives coaching,” Magarity said.
It made a moment like the morning of March 11, 2023, feel improbable. Becker was atop a ladder, net in hand, after Vermont claimed the America East title and an NCAA Tournament berth. By the next day, he was in Boston, stationed behind Magarity’s bench as she coached Holy Cross in the Patriot League championship. He yelled for timeouts she couldn’t hear and eventually celebrated right beside her.
Within hours, he was back on the road for Vermont’s Selection Sunday.
“I think I know that I’m madly in love with this person,” Becker said, “because I’ve never acted like this before.”
Those years apart became the architecture of what they have now. It necessitated a steady line of communication, a shared fluency in the job’s demands and a relationship anchored in support rather than presence. When they got engaged in 2023, the objective was clear: end the separation, and start something new together.
Magarity resigned from her post at Holy Cross in August 2024 — with a desire to “focus on her daughters and start a new chapter with John” — moving their trio to Burlington. In becoming Vermont’s director of major athletic gifts, Magarity stepped outside coaching and into a vantage point that allowed her to parse the sport from a new vantage point.
Vermont basketball’s power couple of Maureen Magarity and John Becker ensures hoops is a family business at Vermont. (Courtesy of Alex Weiss)
“For the first time ever … I was able to be a coach’s wife,” Magarity said, “and I loved that.”
Magarity, at times, traveled with Becker’s team, dropped into practices, made birthday cakes for players and, in the process, became woven into the university’s basketball identity.
Her daughters — Charlotte, who is in the seventh grade, and Caroline, who is in the fourth — took part in summer camps led by the women’s basketball team.
As Kresge’s best friend, Magarity saw her role firmly as Kresge’s “number one fan.” Any mention of taking over the women’s program surfaced in passing and was tossed out as a joke.
When Kresge, after eight years at Vermont, took the Richmond opening on April 11, Becker didn’t push Magarity. And, if anything, Magarity’s first reaction was hesitation, her instinct not to weigh the opportunity for herself but to measure its ripple effect on her daughters and the family.
“She’s the type of person that’s going to put everyone else first,” Becker said. Magarity was also concerned she’d have to give up her role of handpicking Becker’s game-day wardrobe.
Vermont athletic director Jeff Schulman, whose relationship with Magarity dates back to her first year at New Hampshire, urged her past her hesitation, reminding her she was “the best one for this job” and endorsing her vision without condition. Already embedded in the department through her fundraising role and deeply familiar with the community, Magarity began to envision it.
Backed by Schulman and Becker, she accepted a four-year deal worth $315,000 annually, aware of the strain two head coaches could bring under one roof but confident in the foundation around the couple — and between them — would hold.
“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,” Becker said. “And then we’ll reevaluate. … But we really felt confident with this community, with our bosses supporting us and mainly with each other. … And so far, so good.”
The two now sit 10 doors apart in Patrick-Forbush-Gutterson Athletic Complex, mirrored on opposite ends of the hallway — a proximity that still catches people off guard. Staffers joke that Becker, Vermont’s winningest coach who has guided the program to six NCAA Tournament appearances and more than a decade of sustained success, has been a stranger to that stretch of the building for “10 years.”
In the middle of a recent call, Becker walked into Magarity’s suite to ask how much longer she’d be. She told him she was running late, held up by a meeting with a player that ran long.
“Maybe you just talk too much,” he quipped.
“No I don’t!” she responded.
“There’s that,” Magarity said, laughing. “He interrupts a phone conversation by just walking down to the office. He probably wouldn’t do that to your head women’s basketball coach if she wasn’t your wife.”
The dynamic can work because it’s been molded less by basketball itself than by everything that comes with it. The X’s and O’s seldom take over at home — instead, they walk through how to manage people and how to invest in young men and women.
And outside the sport, their chemistry is natural: a love for travel, concerts, the beach and a pull toward family that fills in any space the job leaves behind.
“I found my person,” Magarity said. “He just happens to be a basketball coach.”
It’s what now frames how Magarity approaches both the men’s and women’s programs.
“That’s really important to me,” Magarity said, “that I still give them the love that they are used to. They’re my boys, too.”
That sense of connection bleeds through both locker rooms, with plans already in place for the coaches to organize a Fourth of July barbecue and Halloween party in an effort to “build their community together as the men’s and women’s players,” Magarity said.
“There’s always some holiday being celebrated,” Becker said of Magarity.
Magarity was recruited by Vermont in the mid-1990s and recalls visiting campus with her mom, strolling along Church Street and soaking up Lake Champlain for the first time, thinking “this is the coolest college town I’ve ever seen.”
Years later, it’s home. Summers unfold on the lake, where their boat waits and Becker has long been dubbed “Captain.”
While coaching at New Hampshire, Magarity observed of Vermont that “the support and commitment to women’s basketball here is incredible.” Vermont’s women’s team is fresh off an America East title and its third NCAA Tournament appearance in four years.
“She’s a championship coach,” Becker said. “She’s proven herself. … She wants to keep this program at the level it’s been and make it even better.”
Magarity owns a head coaching record of 218-196, was named Kay Yow National Coach of the Year in 2017 and spearheaded Holy Cross to three straight 20-win seasons and back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances in 2023 and 2024.
“She was born to do this,” Becker said. “It’s a little folksy up here. … People wait around after games, they want to talk, come by the office. She’s going to take time for everyone. … She’s been glowing and back in her element.”
For all the uncertainties ahead, Magarity and Becker are settled on their priorities. When Magarity is away during conference play, Becker knows that “stepdad’s gotta step up,” part of a commitment the two made to make this thing work.
Along the edges of it all, the small negotiations persist … ones that come with a foregone conclusion.
Asked if she’d get first dibs on practice times at Patrick Gym, there wasn’t much hesitation. “Yes, absolutely,” Magarity said.
“I already lost that,” Becker said. “She’s going to get everything she wants.”
