Brown’s Burr 1 Win Away From Milestone
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Maybe all you need to know about Brown women’s basketball coach Jean Marie Burr (aka “Jeannie”) is that when she was approached to do an interview for this column, she had no idea that her team’s next victory would be her 300th career win as a head coach.
Jeannie Burr is in her 24th season on college hill and is the winningest coach in Brown basketball history (men’s and women’s combined). When her Brown Bears (10-6) take on the Big Green of Dartmouth (2-13) Friday night in Hanover, she will be going for her 300th career win. But that’s insignificant to Burr.
“Every year is a new year for me and I get excited about the journey for this year,” she said. “I would much rather talk about this year’s team and how we have won two in-season tournaments and how we beat Providence College by playing some great basketball where we led 36-13 at the half.”
These are not the words of a head coach trying to say the right thing. Burr truly means it when she says the focus should be on her team and not her career record.
Born and raised about 80 miles north of Providence in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Burr matriculated to the University of New Hampshire where she played basketball. Shortly after graduation in 1977, she was drafted by the Women’s Basketball League where she played for the New Jersey Gems.
An injury put an end to her playing days and she eventually ended up at the University of Massachusetts where she attended grad school. It was her experience there as a grad assistant coach for the softball team that she “got the bug” to get into coaching.
“I remember my father saying, ‘why did I send you to college if you’re going to get into coaching?,’” she said.
She would eventually wind up at Fairfield University where she served as an assistant coach for the women’s basketball program in the mid 80’s. From there she was hired to be Brown’s head coach in 1988.
Burr led the program to a remarkable turnaround in her first season on the bench. Having inherited a (6-20) team, she led the Bears to a 16-10 record in her first year. It was a sign of things to come.
15 winning Ivy League seasons and 4 Ivy League Championships later, Burr is still going strong and, with 299 career wins, is closing in on win #300.
“Could you write about this year’s team,” she asked? “I’m just so pleased with our seniors Hannah Passafuime and Aileen Daniels who have really set the tone for the team with their great leadership,” she said. “And Sheila Dixon is a perfect example of the type of player we try to recruit here to Brown every year. She has a fire and a passion for the game and, like all of our girls, is all about the program.”
This is one reason why Burr has been and continues to be successful in her position at Brown. She understands how important recruiting is and tries to identify players who have a passion for and commitment to the game. Once they arrive at Brown, she and her staff try to keep the game fun for them while they attempt to accomplish their goals at the same time.
Winning 300 games isn’t something that Burr or any coach could accomplish all by themselves. “It’s all about team work,” she said. “You have to surround yourself with people that have the same mission. I look at Colleen Kelly who played here. She came back to Brown from Colgate because she wanted to help build this program back to the top of the Ivies.”
Burr also spoke highly of her other assistants Jonathan Parsons and Joanna Skiba. Because the last thing she wanted to talk about was her individual milestone.
Winning 300 games as a head coach in college basketball is not an easy task, particularly at Brown where there are certain challenges to overcome. But, like many of the other successful coaches at the university, Burr doesn’t harp on the negatives or things that she doesn’t have. Instead she accentuates the positives of Brown and all of the great things the school has to offer.
More than any of her previous 299 victories on the floor, Burr is proud of what her student-athletes do when they are away from the hardwood. “These kids are great role models and that’s why it’s so important for them to be doing things out in the community,” she said. “Caroline King is a great example of someone who took the initiative to help out Make-a-Wish. We are trying to get people donate money for every point we score this season to help the organization grant wishes for kids who need them. So far we have raised $3,000 and one wish costs about $65,000. But Caroline contacted the Ivy office and other schools and was able to get 3 other programs in the league on board. It’s stuff like that that makes me real proud.”
Burr has a husband and 4 daughters, all of whom she is also very proud of. And with the time demands of being a coach, being a mother and a wife can be challenging. “That’s what’s good about the people I work with,” she said. “We all have the same goals and when someone needs to attend to something, there’s a confidence that the job will get done.”
And the job has been “getting done” for the past 24 years with the Brown women’s basketball program. This is why Burr is one win away from this career milestone which she knew little about.
Comments:
Bobby Townsend
7:34pm on Thursday, January 26, 2012
I did see the PC game and the game at URI when they won by 13. They played at Pizzatola Center right before the URI-Brown mens basketball game and nearly pulled a game out against Fairfield when they were down 18 early in the 2nd half. They went on to lose that game but really showed a never-say-die attitude. They fought until the end.