Women's basketball coach Theresa Burns wins 607 games

Theresa Burns reflects on years coaching women’s basketball after her 607 career coaching wins, the second most by a coach in U Sport’s history

Theresa Burns started her coaching career immediately after her career as a student athlete. After four years of playing basketball for the University of Toronto, she began coaching for a university team.

“I was 24. I was coaching the university team. It was crazy. There were lots of moments of thinking, what am I doing? Talk about a steep learning curve,” said Burns.

She kicked off her career coaching the then Ryerson University's, now Toronto Metropolitan University, women’s basketball team, without any prior experience. She was encouraged to pursue the opportunity by her university head coach Michèle Bélanger. Burns detailed how her career began.

“Just towards the end of I think, May, I guess my last year she's like "you know, you should think about coaching," and I had never thought about it. And then, the following year when the Ryerson job came open, she's like, you should apply. And I was like, I'm not ready to do that, like, at all, like, not even close, but when your coach tells you to do something, you do it. It was good advice,” said Burns.

Burns said she went on to coach this team for four years before coming to McMaster in 1992. Still a young coach with little experience, Burns highlighted how McMaster’s then director of athletics and recreation, Therese Quigley, helped her to settle in.

“[I was] just really grateful that she took a chance on a young coach and I think right through those years, those early years, especially that the athletic department was very close and very tight knit and just really good people. As a young employee and a young coach, having that support and that feeling of support around you was really important and I'm really grateful for that,” said Burns.

As Burns began working with the Marauders, she started to learn even more and in the process she began to pick up better results than she had in her previous role. Her first two seasons saw Burns only pick up four wins in total, but this began to change in the 1994-1995 season.

That season saw Burns earn a total of seven wins. The next season was even more of an improvement, with the Marauders winning ten games and capturing the bronze medal in the league. After this, Burns started to win league games more often than not, solidifying her identity as a successful coach.

As Burns has progressed through her time with McMaster, she has continued improving herself as a coach. She has won five total Ontario University Athletics titles and two national level titles in her time with McMaster. She has totaled 607 total wins, making her the coach with the second highest number of women's basketball wins in U Sport history.

With this achievement, Burns sees it as a credit to all who have helped her along the way to make the women's basketball team into what it is today.

“I just wanna say Anne Marie, Ed Andrew Kelly Danny and all the assistant coaches that have been in this program. And many of those names I mentioned were like a decade, two decades with us. These are their victories, you know, you build a village, you have to have all those support networks in place and having those good people are what make our program special. Those coaches coached that long in our program because they were special and they believed in what we were doing,” said Burns.

As the women’s basketball season continues, Burns will look to add more wins to her total. The team’s next game will take place on Nov. 15. against Nipissing University.