Mary Brechbiel Agnetti enters the Mercy College Athletics history books as the first female student to receive an athletic scholarship from the College. An alumna of Albertus Magnus High School in Bardonia, N.Y., she joined fellow Falcon and 2009 Hall of Fame inductee Brian Donohue at Mercy College in the fall of 1974 and went on to set the bar high for excellence in women’s basketball. Agnetti, the Mercy College women’s basketball program’s record-holder in steals (488), is Mercy College’s No. 3 all-time scorer with 1,534 career points, and is ninth on the all-time leader board in rebounds (686) and fourth in assists (414).
A native of Haverstraw, N.Y., Agnetti was captain of the Albertus Magnus Falcons girls varsity basketball team. Growing up in Haverstraw, she honed her athletic abilities playing in her backyard with her siblings, George, Frank, Peter, Daniel and Ann. With the Falcons in 1973, Agnetti led the county in scoring with an average of 24 points per game and knocked in 44 points in a single game.
Agnetti played her first season with Mercy College under first year Flyers head coach Cathi Wasilik. During Agnetti’s rookie season, the Flyers went 15-2 (.882).
As a sophomore in the 1975-76 season, she averaged 17.8 points a game, which makes her tied for the sixth highest single-season average in program history. The Flyers were once again extremely successful with Wasilik and Agnetti, going 24-3 for a .889 winning percentage. Her junior season was another winning one as Mercy College women’s basketball went 17-10 (.630).
In her final season with the Flyers, Agnetti helped lead the way for Mercy College to knock out schools such as Brown University and Eastern Connecticut in their Eastern Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women’s Northeast regional tournament run. Against Brown on March 4, 1978, Agnetti scored 29 points to lead Mercy College to the 89-60 tournament victory. In the regional tournament semi-finals, the team easily defeated Yale 89-69, at Iona College’s Mulcahy Center sending to the regional tournament championship and earning the Flyers a bid to the national championship in South Carolina. Agnetti scored her 1,500th point against Yale, helping the Flyers to a 51-34 lead at the half.
That year, the Flyers played under the Hudson Valley Women’s Athletic Conference, and earlier in the season, Agnetti scored 24 points with nine rebounds and handed out four assists in an 88-75 non-league victory over Long Island University. She finished her senior season with an average of 14.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 4.7 steals per game with the 22-10 (.688) Flyers.
After graduating Mercy College with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice in 1978, Agnetti continued to work at St. Agatha Home For Children in Nanuet, N.Y., where she had worked throughout college. She went on to join the New York City Police Department in 1980, starting as a police officer in the Bronx then later becoming a detective in Manhattan. As a successful detective she was promoted twice to sergeant and detective sergeant assigned to various detective squads. In 1995, the housing police merged with the NYPD and she was assigned to the Manhattan Special Victims squad. Agnetti recently retired in 2001, but remained active in her community as a substitute teacher in the North Rockland school system.
With basketball still in her blood, she was the assistant girls varsity basketball coach at North Rockland High School from 2001-2008 and is currently the assistant varsity softball coach.
The daughter of Frances and George (Jiggs) Brechbiel of Haverstraw, she currently resides with her husband Bob, spending time between her Haverstraw home and a house in Myrtle Beach. She has three grown up step children and two grandchildren.
