Tufts Women’s Basketball coach Carla Berube is quite well-known in the basketball world for her time playing at UConn and professionally in the American Basketball League (ABL). She was a member of the undefeated 1994-95 UConn women’s basketball NCAA championship team during her sophomore season, the first national championship team of legendary coach Luigi Geno Auriemma’s career. When she began playing, though, women's basketball was still quite marginal.
“I started playing when I was around eight years old when my dad put a hoop up in our driveway on a tree and I’d play with him and my older brother.” Berube said. “Then I started playing with a lot of the guys in my neighborhood, not a lot of girls in my neighborhood, so there was a group of us that would play all day every day.”
The great success that she enjoyed can be partially attributed to the competitive drive and passion that Berube developed early in her life.
“I know [as a kid] I’d be out there even in the winter with my glove and hat on just working on things, and I wouldn’t let myself come inside until I made shots in a row, things like that.” Berube said. "[I] just fell in love with the game early on.”
This drive led her to become a part of one of the most groundbreaking collegiate women’s basketball teams. The 1994-95 undefeated UConn team is widely credited as being the team that put women’s basketball, especially at the collegiate level, on the map. They are thought of as the team that made young girls want to play and made parents want to get their daughters involved in the game.
Berube fondly remembers her time at UConn as what made her want to get involved with coaching herself.
Immediately after graduating from UConn, Berube spent a year and half playing in the ABL before taking some time away from the game, living in California. She pursued other ventures such as snowboarding and running a marathon before realizing that she missed basketball too much to stay away.
“I talked to my coaches at UConn and told them that I wanted to coach, and that’s when they got me in touch with the head coach at Providence, and [I] got hired as an assistant.” Berube said. “I loved coaching there, but I felt that I wasn’t made for Div. I. I learned about the NESCAC while I was at Providence and I fell in love with the mission of students first and athletes second, that those things can go hand in hand. Then it was just luck that Tufts opened up that year.”
Berube has found great success coaching here at Tufts, winning the Pat Summitt Trophy as the 2015 United States Marine Corps/Women's Basketball Coaches Association NCAA Division III National Coach of the Year along with five NESCAC Coach of the Year awards. Her teams have also experienced great success, including two straight Final Four appearances and qualifying for the NCAA tournament in six of the last seven years. She did not seem to find any issues transitioning from coaching at a DI program to a DIII program.
“I’m sure there’s a lot more money in recruiting and travel for Div. I,” Berube said. “But the level and the commitment and the passion; I’ve actually found more passionate basketball players here at Tufts than I did at Providence.”
She credits much of her coaching style to what she learned from her own coaches during her playing days.
“I think [my coaching style] is a mix of all the mentors I’ve had.” Berube said. "I had a really great high school coach as well, and he was a defense-first coach just like coach Auriemma: You’re gonna play if you can defend. That’s always been my philosophy, and I think that I got that from those two coaches."
Her team is currently ranked as the No. 1 team in the country for women’s DIII basketball and has hopes of capturing a national championship this year, which would make coach Berube one of a select few individuals to have won a national championship both as a player and as a coach. Yet despite the rewards of team success, Berube’s goals for her team seem to be more about the player experience than anything else.
“I want us to get better every day and have a great experience,” Berube said. “I want to make sure that [my players] are enjoying playing the game day in and day out, that they are striving and working hard at that.”
From the Sidelines: Carla Berube
