Villanova Univeristy Athletics

A standout center during his playing days whose two-decade coaching career including a stint at his alma mater, John McKenna played on some of Villanova’s most successful teams under coaches Harry Stuhldreher and Maurice “Clipper” Smith. He was a member of the Wildcats varsity squad from 1935-37 and graduated in 1938. McKenna was inducted to the Varsity Club Hall of Fame in 1986.
 
Villanova was 22-4-2 (.821) during McKenna’s career and he earned mention by Colliers All-American for his play on the Wildcats line. In his three years on the active roster Villanova outscored its opponents by an impressive 400 points (513-113) in just 28 games played while averaging a plus-14.3 scoring margin. The team’s success included playing in the Bacardi Bowl in Havana, Cuba at the end of the 1936 campaign.
 
McKenna’s first season was in 1935 in the final year of Stuhldreher’s 11 seasons as head coach. Villanova was 7-2 and did not allow a single point through the first five games of the season. After narrow losses on the road against Detroit and Penn State, the Wildcats ended the season with a 21-14 win at Temple.
 
First-year head coach Clipper Smith guided Villanova to a 7-2-1 campaign in 1936. The tie came in the season’s final game when the Wildcats and Auburn played to a 7-7 draw in the Bacardi Bowl. Played on January 1, 1937, the game was the seventh in eight editions of the Bacardi Bowl and the only contest of the eight which featured two American teams playing each other as opposed to a U.S. college team playing against a Cuban team. The game before the Bacardi Bowl was a 12-0 win at Manhattan on November 21, 1936, and it was significant because it was the first game in what grew to be a program record 22-game unbeaten streak (19-0-3) which stretched until the early part of the 1939 season.
 
McKenna’s senior year in 1937 saw the Wildcats 8-0-1 in the midst of the unbeaten streak. Incredibly, apart from a 25-7 win over Marquette at Shibe Park, Villanova did not allow a single other point in its other eight games and finished the year with a 185-7 scoring margin. McKenna earned honorable mention All-America recognition from the Associated Press and Colliers and was also an All-East honorable mention selection.
 
During his time on campus McKenna was the vice president of the junior class and a member of the Massachusetts Club, serving as treasurer his junior year and president as a senior. He was also a two-year member of the Music Club and graduated in 1938 with a degree in Philosophy.
 
McKenna began a successful coaching career as the head coach at Malvern Prep in 1946 and from there he went on to assistant coaching rules at Villanova from 1947-48 and at Loyola (Calif.) from 1949-51. He spent one year as an assistant coach at VMI in 1952 and was the head coach of the Keydets from from 1953-65. He compiled a 62-60-8 record as head coach, including a 44-27-5 mark in the Southern Conference. His 1957 team was undefeated (9-0-1) and ranked No. 20 in the final Associated Press poll of the year.
 
After his coaching career McKenna was an athletics administrator at Georgia Tech from 1966-79 and was promoted to Associate Director of Athletics in 1972. McKenna passed away in 2007 in Decatur, Ga. at the age of 92.