As a senior at Archbishop Prendergast High School in 1968, Rosa Gatti recalls a friend of her father's coming into his camera store near 69^th Street in Philadelphia. The visitor was an Augustinian priest, a family friend, and he mentioned that day that Villanova would soon be fully opening its doors to women.
 
 "That," says Gatti now, "was divine providence."
 
The eldest of five children, her father was a Villanova graduate who still retained a healthy attachment to its athletics teams. The family dutifully watched the Eagles on fall Sundays and Big Five basketball in the winter months. Gatti enrolled in the school of Arts & Sciences that fall with a focus on modern languages, specifically French. The notion was that she might pursue a career as an interpreter.
 
A recession in the spring of 1972, however, made the job market for new college graduates daunting. When Sports Information Director Bob Ellis, for whom Gatti had served as a student volunteer as an undergraduate, offered her an open secretarial position, she accepted.
 
 "The intent was to work there for a year or two and then go live in France," she says.
 
Paris, however, never became a permanent address. Instead, a journey that began in a Field House later named for her friend Jake Nevin, took her to a distinguished career highlighted by helping steer a nascent ESPN into the fabric of America's sports media landscape. Along the way she has accumulated a series of industry honors, the most recent of which is induction into the 2021 College Sports Information Directors Hall of Fame.
 
By any definition, Gatti was a pioneer as attested to by another honor conferred in 2009 by her peers, the CoSIDA Mary Jo Haverbeck Trailblazer Award. But this wasn't a fact she had many idle hours to ponder in her time at Villanova. There were too many long hours to log publicizing the Wildcats' varsity sports, including a high-visibility spot working alongside the new head basketball coach, Rollie Massimino.
 
 "I was just doing the job," she notes on a Zoom call from her home in Connecticut.
 
In the beginning, Gatti found herself answering the calls of local TV icons she had watched for years – men like Tom Brookshier and Al Meltzer.
 
"That was sort of the glamour part of it," she recalls. "The rest, I kind of just immersed myself in."
 
Before long, the secretarial moniker was exchanged for the titles of assistant director, acting director and ultimately sports information director to better reflect the breadth of her contributions. She was the first female to hold the title of sports information director at a program with Division IA football.
 
Unfortunately, the men's basketball team was in a period of transition after the departure of Jack Kraft and the arrival of Massimino from Penn in 1973. Villanova won a total of 16 games in the two seasons from 73-75.
 
"I was really thrown into the fire at a young age," she states, "and I learned a lot about crisis management."
 
After being elevated to the director role in 1974 following Ellis' departure to the Philadelphia Bell of the World Football League, Gatti accompanied the Wildcats on a seven game, 20-day December jaunt. It included in-season tournaments in Kentucky and Hawaii with single games at Oregon and, as a final stop, at USC. The Wildcats were defeated by the two Pac Eight foes, the Ducks and Trojans by a combined 64 points and finished the journey with a 2-5 record.
 
"That could not have been easy for Rosa," recalls Whitey Rigsby, today a Wildcats radio analyst and then a freshman guard. "We were on the road for 20 straight days and there were a lot of unhappy fans we heard from after we got home."
 
Though they had their moments – Gatti recalls one loud disagreement about a local media story on the Field House court – Massimino and his new SID worked well together.            
 
"I was just an 18-year-old kid that didn't know much about the business then," Rigsby states. "But you could see the respect Coach Mass had for Rosa. I also think he liked that she was the first woman in the country to do that job."
 
Not long into her stewardship with the Wildcats, and with the basketball team struggling to make a mark, the media began seeking out other stories. A young PR professional in a realm mostly populated by men made for an appealing angle.
 
"When you're losing," she notes, "it's hard to get stories written about your team. The media started interviewing me because I was an anomaly. The stories in the paper were about me. I realized that I'm supposed to be doing PR for the team. I really tried to push back on being at the center of those."
 
That, in turn, led to another revelation.
 
"How do you find those creative stories about the players and coach when the team is losing?" she recalls asking.
 
Gatti enlisted the help of her student workers and others in a search for those untold features.
 
"I would challenge them to go out and find the stories about the swimmer or tennis player," she says. "Women's sports were just getting going at Villanova then. We tried to tell those stories too."
 
A few years later, after moving from Brown University to ESPN in 1980, those trials informed her strategy as she sought to stir interest in a network that was a mystery to much of the country. At the time, ESPN was a novelty and unavailable in large chunks of the U.S. She recalls pitching Boston Globe TV columnist Jack Craig on a story about the network.
 
"Rosa," he asked, "why would I write about ESPN when we don't get it here?"
 
If the straightforward approach didn't produce results, the innovative sometimes did.
 
"Creating those stories for Villanova helped me with ESPN," she says.
 
By 1986's ESPN's reach had already exploded and Gatti was at the helm of its communications arm. While reading a USA Today feature on Chris Plonsky, the first female conference PR Director at the BIG EAST, Gatti got an inkling of the impact her career path had on the rest of the industry.
 
Plonsky, today the Executive Senior Associate Athletics Director at the University of Texas, recalled the episode via email.
 
"A reporter from USA Today asked me about that fact," wrote Plonsky, "and I mentioned that Rosa Gatti had long been THE role model for all of us pursuing careers in sports/sports information, given her already advanced and validated career path from Villanova-Brown and then ESPN as chief communications officer. 
 
"We all knew who Rosa was and what she was doing as a trailblazer in what had heretofore been a non-conventional area for women professionals. She was so admired, respected and appreciated for her ultra-competency, her class, her impact for the still young network and her strong ethical voice." 
 
"That was the first time I went, 'wow,'" Gatti says now. "I didn't think about being a pioneer or being first. I was just trying to get my job done. When that quote appeared I was like, I was a role model to other women that they could do this job."
 
Semi-retired since 2013, Gatti today remains active as a consultant and on the board of several non-profits. She has served on Villanova's Board of Trustees and underwrites a fellowship position in the Athletics Communications office.
 
"Here I am eight years into semi-retirement, and all this is resurrected with stories about what I did," she says. "It brings a tear to my eye."
 
Former ESPN colleagues and industry friends have been in touch since this latest news was made public. A congratulatory tweet from current Wildcats' head coach Jay Wright caught the attention of a nephew.
 
"It's been an opportunity to reminisce about the blessings I have had in my career," Gatti states.
 
"The guys who played here when Rosa was here are very happy to see her honored in this way," Rigsby, who graduated in 1978, says. "She was a pioneer in her business."
 
"Rosa is a legend and has been an incredible resource, not just for our staff but our entire University," adds Wright. "She's a Hall of Famer in every way."
 
In recent days, Gatti has found her mind drifting back to those who held that first door open. Rev. Edmund J. McCarthy, Villanova's president from 1971-75 had to approve the decision to appoint her to a forward-facing role. Ellis, the SID, recognized the scope of her early contributions and allowed her to grow.
 
"Father McCarthy made the ultimate decision to give me the job at Villanova," Gatti states. "That was significant. This was an Augustinian school that only opened its doors to women a few years before. Villanova was the first and it was because of Father McCarthy and Bob Ellis.
 
"I've been blessed to work with so many wonderful people."
 
Though she spends much of the winter in Florida, Gatti hopes to make it back to some basketball games this winter (she is a men's basketball season ticketholder). The ties to Villanova remain strong nearly five decades after she began her amazing career journey in a small office inside the Field House.