Photo by Laurie Shaul
For Brenda Frese, a severe foot injury proved to be the path to a college coaching career. Frese underwent four surgeries while playing for the University of Arizona, where she competed for three seasons. “I started watching my head coach in the locker room and at practice a lot and I realized I could coach at the collegiate level,” she says. And what a college coach she’s been for the University of Maryland women’s team for 19 seasons. The Terps consistently rank among the nation’s top-25 programs, have won 10 conference titles, appeared in three final fours, and, most importantly, won a national championship in 2006 when Frese was 35 years old. Fifteen years later, Frese has amassed a whopping 543 wins across 22 seasons at Maryland, Ball State, and Minnesota. She’s faced challenges off the court, too, including her son Tyler’s bout with Leukemia. We talked to Frese about her success, national championship, how she wins recruits over, and her son Tyler. What’s the most important nugget of wisdom you impart to your players? We are fortunate that we recruit high-level players. It’s understanding their goals. A lot of the players that come here want to play at the professional level. We hold them to that standard and show them that they can achieve bigger things than they ever realized. You take them through the course of their careers to allow those dreams to come true. Is the fact that you have more than 40 players that earned All-Academic conference honors something fans may not realize? Yeah. Absolutely. Players that come here are really driven on the academic end. We’ve had three players that recently went on to medical school. We have another that is a doctor. Can you take me back to when you won the national championship? What was that feeling like? It was pretty surreal. We were the one team no one was picking of the four. At that time, we were fearless and didn’t know any better or how hard it was to get to a Final Four let alone win a national championship. It was just some incredible memories and everybody lining together up to accomplish that goal. What does it take to develop and run a consistent Top 25 program? It’s the top-down approach between your players and staff understanding what’s important in your program. When you attract great coaches, and support them, they understand your philosophy. For our players as well, they get taught from the top down: who we are, what’s important to us, and the level of discipline it requires to be successful. It all goes hand-in-hand with holding up the culture in your program over time. How do you convince a Top-25 recruit to come to become a Terp when she’s also being pursued by other top programs? There are so many great programs out there, but we hone in on players we want. We are very consistent in our approach with how we recruit that player. Everybody is going to have great academics and facilities. It’s about developing the relationships over time with the recruits. You have put an emphasis on your team being a family, and, in a sense, you’ve also integrated your own family, including your twins Tyler and Markus, into the team. Is that your personality and the way you do things? It is. It starts at home with my mom and dad. They raised six kids and we were all close and still are. We are still committed to twice a week Zoom calls with my parents because of the pandemic. I’ve committed to them every step of the way and it’s been no different with my program. I always want the players to feel like this is their second home. My husband and boys have been a part of it as well. That is going to be a staple every step of the way. How do you balance family life and coaching since basketball requires endless hours of work? It takes a village. It starts at the home front with my husband and his parents. They have been huge for us. I had a son that went through cancer and that’s where it really took a village amongst everybody on staff. I have great assistants and a support staff so that if I can’t be there, they are able keep things going smoothly. You have to have great people around you in order to be successful. How is your son Tyler doing? Has that experience become the springboard for your charity work with Leukemia? He is doing great. He is cancer free and goes to appointments once a year at Johns Hopkins. We are really, really blessed. Leukemia charity is a cause that has been really important to us. We want to give because we went through such a traumatic experience. My son went through cancer for two and half years and that was like nothing I have ever experienced. How challenging has the season been with the pandemic? This has been more frustrating than anything. Coaches like to be organized and know what our schedule is. It is teaching us that we have to have that flexibility today because you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. Is it a big fear to have several players come down with COVID? No question. We have a small margin for injury or COVID. We already hit that with Angel [Reese] going down, with only 10 scholarship players. We can’t afford to lose a couple of more. We wouldn’t be able to put a team out there. It’s a huge concern, but something I can’t control. We had two games canceled with other team’s players testing positive. You have to be as flexible as you can. Have you thought about what you want to do after basketball? I’d like to travel. I know I am not a lifer in this game by any sort. I want to do other things and it probably won’t be basketball related. It will not be spent working 15 hours a day as a coach. I want to spend time with family and friends, and travel. You want to sleep in, wake up, and have a cup of coffee and decide what you want to do. That day will come.
