Brenda Frese, Legendary Terrapin National Champion Basketball Coach to be Guest Speaker at Partlow Insurance Sports Breakfast

Brenda Frese, head coach of the Championship University of Maryland Women’s basketball team, is being announced as a guest speaker at the Partlow Insurance Sports Breakfast. Sharen Gromling, president of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival® is honored to welcome Frese to the head table of the event.

Since her first season at the helm, when the team won just 10 games, Brenda Frese has guided the University of Maryland Women’s Basketball team to a National Championship in 2006, twenty overall winning seasons, nineteen 20-win seasons, seven 30-win seasons and nineteen bids to the NCAA Tournament. In 2022, Maryland rewarded Frese’s amazing run of excellence with a contract extension through at least the 2028-2029 season. On February 14th, 2022, Frese won her 500^th game at Maryland, making her the winningest coach in Maryland basketball history. On that day, she surpassed former women’s basketball head coach and Hall of Famer, Chris Weller, who retired with 499 wins with the Terrapins. After leaving the ACC and joining the Big Ten in 2014, Frese’s Terrapins have had historic success in that league. Her Terrapin teams have earned a record of 157-24 (a success rate of .867) in conference play, including their 20-4 record in the Big Ten Tournament. Frese and the Terps have won six of eight Big Ten Championships, five Big Ten Tournament titles, and made a record seven straight appearances in the Big Ten Championship game.

Frese has built her team’s success around recruiting, hard work, and a positive atmosphere. The instant she arrived on campus, she determinedly worked the recruiting trails in an effort to reclaim the elite status Maryland once held in the 1980s under the aforementioned Chris Weller. Success then came quickly and early. Before she even coached a game in the newly constructed XFINITY Center, she received commitments from a pair of high school All-Americans, including Shay Doron, who went on to become a three-time All-ACC pick and a Women’s National Basketball Association Draft selection. In all, 23 McDonald’s All-Americans have donned a Maryland uniform under Frese’s reign. Obviously, few coaches across any sport can claim the level of consistency and standard of excellence as Brenda Frese in her 22 years at Maryland. Two-time National Coach of the Year, Frese’s high work rate and positive attitude have resulted in seventeen Top-15 recruiting classes, three Final Fours, fourteen Conference Titles, and that stand-out National Championship in 2006. Frese has balanced this strong work ethic with a fun and family-friendly environment, also becoming a wife and a mother of twin boys, giving birth to them in the midst of one of the most successful seasons in the program’s history. With the birth of her twins in February of 2008, she becomes one of only seven coaches to win a National Women’s Championship and be a parent.

Coach Frese will participate in the Partlow Insurance Sports Breakfast at the Tolley Dental Zone at the James R. Wilkins Athletics & Events Center on the campus of Shenandoah University, Saturday, May 4 at 8 a.m., and she will ride in the glo fiber Grand Feature Parade at 1:30 p.m.

Tickets to Festival events are available at www.thebloom.com/events.