Courtside to C-Suite: UMD Basketball Coach Brenda Frese Talks Leadership With Smith Students

By James Consoli

The fearless leadership style of working hard, recognizing failures, picking yourself back up and doing it all over again feels like a lost art in business today.

But University of Maryland Women’s Basketball Head Coach Brenda Frese says it’s essential for the next generation of managerial leaders to keep that art alive.

Frese visited the Robert H. Smith School of Business on Monday to share the biggest takeaways from her more than quarter-century coaching career with graduate students from Smith’s Master’s in Management Studies program. 

Her talk touched on understanding her players and carving out one-on-one time amid the chaos of name, image and likeness rules in today’s college sports environment. She also provided insights on building a winning culture in a program not used to it, and why her own coaching journey—full of turmoil and setbacks—was the “necessary evil” that shaped her success at the helm of Maryland Basketball.

Standing before a room of future leaders dressed in Maryland red, Frese addressed the Smith community the same way she would her own team, which remains undefeated this season.

She began with a look back at her early coaching lessons at Ball State and Minnesota, noting that those roles gave her room to make early mistakes not typically afforded at bigger programs like Maryland or Ohio State. She spoke about growing up in Iowa, earning a scholarship and then being forced to end her college career a year early due to repeated foot injuries.

“If I had not had those foot injuries and had to call my career early,” Frese said, “I would have never gotten into coaching.”

Good for Maryland that she did.

A national champion in 2006, a two-time National Coach of the Year and the winningest coach in Maryland basketball history, Frese said those setbacks ultimately revealed her true purpose as a leader and a student of the game.

Her lessons for today’s students planning to “run point” in their own careers came through years of lived experience.

“Positive self-talk is so critical not only to my players but to myself as well,” she told the audience. She emphasized the importance of carving out time for personal peace practices like meditation and reading.

“You probably wouldn’t guess it by the cameras and the media, but I am an avid reader and a natural introvert,” she said. “If I weren’t here working, I would be at home reading.”

She stressed making time for yourself in moments of burnout, especially in high-pressure industries, while also highlighting a shared trait among great leaders: a relentless work ethic shaped early in life. A trait that she credits parents with instilling through their roles as the unsung architects of future leaders.

“Some of the best players and leaders who came through Maryland… their parents never came up to me and told me how they needed to be coached.”

Her best players, she said, always carried a willingness to listen, learn and stay humble. WNBA star, Olympian and former Terp Alyssa Thomas stood out as a prime example of that mindset.

Frese also urged students to take goal-setting seriously. “Make goals, it’s something people don’t do anymore. Make goals and make them realistic,” she said, recalling how taking a ten-win team to the national championship in her first year wasn’t realistic—but four years later, in 2006, it became reality.

She reminded students that the same traits that build great teams—resilience, humility and steady goal-setting—also build great leaders. And, as with athletes, the challenges they embrace in pressure-filled moments will shape them just as powerfully.

Frese’s final message to this next roster of CEOs and corporate change makers was simple:

“Don’t try to be something you’re not. Be comfortable being uncomfortable.”