Anchorage Daily News

Linda Bruns, a women's sports pioneer who transformed UAA women's basketball from a struggling program to a championship one, died of cancer Thursday at her Arizona home.

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Former UAA head women's coach Linda Bruns.

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Bruns, 66, was the passion and muscle behind UAA women's basketball for 11 seasons.

During that span, she guided the Seawolves to membership in a conference, helped established the Northern Lights Invitational tournament, recruited some of the finest players to ever wear the uniform, started a booster club, won three league titles and played in three NCAA postseason tournaments, making it to the Sweet Sixteen in 1988.

"She built the women's program from the ground up," said UAA associate athletic director Tim McDiffett. "She was such a great person in so many ways, it's hard to even talk about it."

Bruns -- whose ex-husband, Charlie Bruns, coached the UAA men's team for many years -- was at UAA from 1979-90. She was 176-142 over 11 seasons, a record that looks much better when you toss out the first couple of years when the Seawolves were brand new. In her final eight seasons, Bruns was 149-73 for a 67.1 winning percentage, and from 1982-83 on, none of her teams won fewer than 17 games.

She brought players like Robin Graul, Cheryl Bishop, Wendy Sturgis, Greta Fadness and Diane Dobrich to the school, where each had stellar careers. Graul is arguably the best play in team history and a number of Bruns' former players still own spots in the UAA record book.

Bruns was a captivating figure on the sideline, dressed impeccably usually in slacks and a fashionable pair of dress boots, her white-gray hair cut into a short, neat style.

"Count it!" she declared nearly every time the Seawolves launched a shot, a phrase usually accompanied by the pumping of a fist and -- if it was a game-changing shot -- a leap off the bench and a thousand-watt smile.

"She was a great ambassador for women's sports in general," McDiffett said. "It was a turbulent time for women's athletics when she came here and she had a way of advocating for women's athletics without being confrontational. That was a real art, and because of that she had a lot of success in making changes."

Bruns was born in 1942 in Great Falls, Mont., a generation before Title IX, the 1972 landmark federal law that guaranteed opportunities for girls and women in sports.

The little sister to a number of brothers, she grew up a tomboy. She played volleyball and tennis at the University of Montana, mainly because they were among the only sports offered to women at the time.

"She was really ahead of her time," McDiffett said of Bruns' athletic skills and ambitions. "She was a great golfer. She was a state racquetball champion. She played volleyball in college. She would've been good at anything she tried. She had great hand-eye coordination."

Bruns left UAA in 1990 to take the women's basketball job at Northern Arizona, where she worked three seasons before retiring from coaching. She remained in Flagstaff, where she owned a small business.

In a 1999 interview with the Daily News, Bruns called UAA's championship run in the 1990 Northern Lights Invitational championship -- back then, an eight-team tournament with seven Division I teams and UAA -- "the great highlight of my career."

But it wasn't all about wins and losses.

When she left UAA in 1990, Bruns reflected on her legacy. As she spoke about the many players she coached, she spoke not of their on-court accomplishments as much as she did on their post- basketball successes.

"We have one who's a lawyer, one who's in med school, one who's an FBI agent, and a lot of them right here are teachers," she told the Daily News. "A lot of them are doing good things. I'm proud of them."

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.

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