Rutgers Prep head coach Mary Klinger (left) and her college coach, former Rutgers mentor Theresa Grentz, with whom they won the 1982 AIAW National Championship, after Klinger’s 700th win as a head coach on January 18, 2024. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)
Longtime Rutgers Prep girls’ basketball coach Mary Klinger is retiring after 42 years at the Easton Avenue school.
The Rutgers Prep girls’ basketball team broke the news Wednesday night on Instagram.
Assistant and friend Audrey Taylor – the former Franklin coach who won two Tournament of Champions titles there – has been named the program’s new head coach, Klinger confirmed to Central Jersey Sports Radio on Thursday morning.
Klinger – then Mary Coyle – was a member of the 1982 Rutgers women’s basketball team that won the final AIAW National Championship, along with her twin sister Patty and future UConn asssistant Chris Dailey.
Soon after college, she landed at Rutgers Prep, where she amassed a 757-267 record in 42 years leading the girls’ program. She earned her 700th win in January of 2024, in an 85-42 victory over Ridge.
A large part of that success came in the last decade or so. Since the start of the 2014-15 season, Rutgers Prep was 289-50. They have won eight of the last 11 Somerset County Tournament titles, and has had eleven straight full seasons with 20 or more wins.
Klinger also sent numerous players on to play high-level college basketball, most recently and most notably Vanderbilt’s Mikayla Blakes, who also was a McDonald’s All-American.
Klinger’s retirement never seemed imminent, and yet it wasn’t much of a surprise either. And her successor, it turns out, was not too far away.
It will be former rival coach and good friend Audrey Taylor, whom Klinger brought on as her top assistant this past season after the departure of Michelle Sharp, who runs Team Sharp for seven- to 17-year-olds in the New Balance, UA Rise and Elite 40 Leagues.
The two showed a very good rapport last season, as the Argonauts won yet another Somerset County Tournament championship, their 12th as a program, all under Klinger.
Her programs won six NJSIAA Non-Public South B sectional titles, three state championships in Non-Public B. They made the now-defunct Tournament of Champions three times, most recently in the last TOC before the NJSIAA scrapped it in 2022. They lost in the finals that year to St. John Vianney.
More Mary Klinger accolades…
- 15 NJISAA (New Jersey Independent Schools Athletic Association) Prep Championchips
- 11 Skyland Conference Divisional titles
- 11 Somerset County Tournament titles
- Skyland Conference top pod winner, 2021 (COVID season, no SCT)
- 6 NJSIAA Non-Public South B championships
- 3 NJSIAA Non-Public Group B state championships
- John Wooden Legacy Award Winner, 2023
- NFHS National Coach of the Year, 2021-22
- Member NJSCA Hall of Fame
- Member New Jersey Sports Writers Hall of Fame
- Member West Catholic (PA) High School Hall of Fame
- Member Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame (part of 1982 AIAW National Championship team, inducted 1993
- Selection Committee Member WBCA & McDonald’s All-American Team
- McDonald’s All-American Team Head Coach, 2011
- Assistant Coach USA Women’s Basketball U17 World Championship Team, 2014
- Served on staff of USA Junior National Basketball Team
In an email to the Rutgers Prep community, the school said it will share plans in the coming months on how it will recognize and honor Mary Klinger’s legacy at the school.
“I know you join all of us on campus in wishing Mary, along with her husband Jimmy and son mike, the very best as she embarks on the next stages of her amazing journey,” the statement added.
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