BOYERTOWN >> When she lost as a college athlete, Marcia Brumbach cried.
Winning was in her DNA. It had become embedded during her outstanding three-sport career in the mid-1960s at Boyertown Area High School.
“I did not know how to lose,” the retired Boyertown teacher and coaching legend said, reflecting over breakfast recently at her frequent hangout, The Jukebox Cafe. “It was the hardest thing. And I was determined when I was coaching, where there’s a will there’s a way, and we’re going to be successful in all sports.”
Brumbach was a standout in basketball, field hockey and softball at Boyertown. She returned to coach multiple sports successfully, but her most impressive achievements and greatest satisfaction came from coaching a sport that she wasn’t even allowed to play when it was introduced at Boyertown in 1965.
Curiosity and commitment are a powerful combination, especially in a person as driven as Brumbach. Her parents couldn’t afford college, so she worked several jobs to get through at Concord (W.Va.), continued to play multiple sports, and started learning a sport, lacrosse, which under her direction would start sending many Boyertown girls to college.
Brumbach would coach it uniquely and brilliantly at Boyertown for 21 years, launching a rich legacy as the program set the area standard for girls lacrosse, first in the Ches-Mont under Brumbach, then in the Pioneer Athletic Conference under current head coach Pam Wernersbach, one of Brumbach’s top former players.
There’s a lot of great history here, and it will be celebrated at the Boyertown girls lacrosse 50th anniversary gathering, an alumni reunion to be held Nov. 28 at the Boyertown Orioles from 6-11 p.m. (Further information can be found on the Boyertown Girls Lacrosse Alumni Facebook page).
The Brumbach era produced 14 league championships, six District 1 titles (there were no state girls lacrosse playoffs during Brumbach’s coaching era), a 245-67-12 record, a 56-game winning streak from 1993-95, and 26 high school All-Americans.
“We always played as a team,” Brumbach said. “There’s no letter ‘I’ in the word team; to accomplish anything you have to work as a group. We worked very, very hard, and we had fun. The key was the perfection of skills.
“I had a heck of a lot of excellent players. And the parents were great.”
Behind Wernersbach, the Boyertown coach since 2005, the Lady Bears reeled off 11 straight PAC-10 titles. They also didn’t lose a conference game for 10 straight seasons. That 152-game league winning streak, which began under previous coach Doug Deysher, was finally snapped last season. Wernersbach’s teams qualified for the state playoffs in 2009, ’11 and ’13.
“It’s just really rewarding to be able to have hopefully a positive impact on these kids’ lives as they move on,” Wernersbach said.
The Brumbach impactGirls lacrosse at BASH started in 1965 under coach Judy Lance. Then a junior, Brumbach was told that only ninth and 10th-graders at Boyertown could play.
Talk about a fast learner.”When I went to college, I wanted to learn more about this game,” said Brumbach, a ’66 graduate of Boyertown and ’71 grad of Concord. “I was determined to learn this game that they wouldn’t allow me to play. … I was determined to coach a sport I never played, and that sport took me the farthest I could go.”
Brumbach’s Boyertown classmate, Sherry Jessum, returned to coach Boyertown girls lacrosse in ’71, when upperclassmen were included on the team. She led the Lady Bears to their first Ches-Mont title that year. (Other head coaches through the 50 years included Carol DeHaven, Sue Noll and Carol Kline.)
Brumbach returned to teach in the Boyertown district and became head girls lacrosse coach in ’74.
She was ready.Brumbach had attended numerous lacrosse clinics. She had been a lacrosse referee.
“That really helped me out when I got the head coaching position at the high school,” she said.
Brumbach, whose first love was basketball, applied her hoops background and some of its strategies to lacrosse. Example: “When the goalkeeper gets the ball, it’s an outlet pass, you get it up to the wing, and the wing brings it back to the middle, like basketball,” she said.
She used junk defenses. She took it farther – too far according to some opponents.
“I started to set picks; I was coaching basketball at that time, too,” Brumbach smiled. “I thought, ‘We can do this for plays.’
“Then I got in trouble from the referees.”
There were no rules in the PIAA handbook then specific to setting picks in lacrosse, but there would be later, thanks to Boyertown’s improvisational lady lacrosse pioneer.
Coaching out of the box, drawing good athletes, Brumbach’s teams often seemed in a league of their own. She was the Pennsylvania Girls High School Lacrosse Coach of the Year seven times, and the first female inducted in the Ches-Mont Hall of Fame as a player and coach. Over a few summers she coached teams in England, Scotland and Japan.
“Where it took me was unbelievable,” she said.
Playing for her took her girls a long way, too. One thing’s for sure: Brumbach didn’t coddle them.
Speaking to the Boyertown Area Times upon Brumbach’s Pennsylvania Hall induction in 2013, Debra (Minzola) Jimenez, Class of ’85, said, “Coach was a tough cookie … she made me work harder. She knew exactly what buttons to push; she taught me perseverance, tenacity. She was a coach that made a difference in her players’ lives on and off the field.”
“Ms. Brumbach taught me how to have confidence in myself, be a leader, and to dig deep, which not only helped me in having a successful athletic career, but also a successful business,” said Teri (Minzola) Afflerbach, Class of ’95.
Several former players became her assistants.
“That was great because they knew me, and if something went wrong, the kids would go to them,” Brumbach grinned. “And they would say, ‘Well, Ms. Brumbach really means well.”
Making college more possibleAs the watershed legislation Title IX in 1972 opened the door for more women to compete in sports, Boyertown girls lacrosse soon became an express lane to a college education. Brumbach had players competing at the college level all over the map, many on the Division I level.
Others who were key contributors to the lacrosse team got scholarships for other sports. Brumbach coached multi-sport standouts like Carol Sauppe (Class of ’75), also a field hockey star who would become Boyertown’s first woman to earn an athletic scholarship, as well as Temple’s first woman scholarship athlete. Nicole Barnhart, a 2000 graduate, got a soccer scholarship to Stanford and was backup goalkeeper on the 2008 U.S. women’s gold-medal Olympic team.
“That was one of my big goals,” Brumbach said of lacrosse being a ticket to college for her girls.
Likewise, Wernersbach. On average about four of her seniors each year play in college. Wernersbach earned a lacrosse scholarship to Old Dominion.
“The biggest thing that honestly I try to accomplish, besides winning … it’s a method to get the kids to college, and hopefully make college a little cheaper,” Wernersbach said. “That’s a huge thing for me.”
Maggie Tamasitis (Class of 2008) starred for Wernersbach, the Lady Bears twice getting to the district semis during her career. She played at Notre Dame, ranking fourth all-time in assists in Division I history. Emily Austerberry (’10) took her talents to Wernersbach’s alma mater.
“Lacrosse is a huge stepping stone and gets you to great universities,” Tamasitis said.
Carrying the torchWernersbach’s winning effect on her players has been similar to Brumbach’s, if with a different style.
“I’m definitely not as loud and vocal as she was,” Wernersbach said after a quick laugh. “Because I’m not as loud, the kids have to be able to take a little bit more ownership of what they’re doing on the field.
“Marcia just had as a coach a magnetic personality. She was able to draw kids in and get the most out of their talents.”
As has Wernersbach.”I have to say good players come from good coaches, and the reason I started playing lacrosse is because of Pam Wernersbach,” said Austerberry. “We wanted to continue the success the program had been having.”
“With success comes more interest, and people wanted to be a part of that and be a part of something that’s bigger than themselves,” Tamasitis said.
Brumbach’s early success profoundly impacted the dreams of elementary school girls in Boyertown like Wernersbach.
“Having Marcia as a coach made me love the game and made me love to compete,” said Wernersbach. “She was really well-connected and ahead of the game at the high school level … It really set a solid foundation of knowledge and love of the game for me.”
It didn’t hurt the Wernersbach era that it’s a different world now; many kids specialize year-round in one sport, and youth leagues in many sports start younger. Wernersbach’s 2014 seniors were the first group that started playing lacrosse in third grade. Wernersbach noted that a parent, Audrey Nettles, started a girls youth lacrosse program, BOLT, through the Boyerstown Optimist Club.
“What Audrey started has gotten more kids involved at a younger age, and made us more competitive with soccer and softball and all these things where everybody’s asking these kids to play year-round,” Wernersbach said. “By the time they hit me at the high school level, they have more experience and confidence.”
As with Brumbach, players under Wernersbach needed to develop their weaker hand, become ambidextrous.
“In college, some people still couldn’t catch with their non-dominant hand,” Austerberry said, “But learning that at an earlier age and having to repeatedly do it every day was such a beneficial thing.”
Tamasitis’ first year of high school lacrosse coincided with Wernersbach’s first year of coaching.
“She really homed in on the fact that it was about having fun, enjoying yourself, and playing for something bigger than yourself. It was easy to pass that on to the younger classes,” Tamasitis said.
“Her being our coach was a huge aspect of why we were successful,” Austerberry says. “She’s just an amazing person and so knowledgeable of the sport.”
So now, 50 years have passed – from a niche sport to one that Boyertown girls grow up dreaming about playing in high school. Great coaching, talented, team-first players, a common thread of generation-to-generation commitment. From Brumbach, who spoke loudly, to Wernersbach, the Lady Bears have carried a big stick.
