University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: October 20, 2005

By JESSICA KELTZ
Reporter Contributor

Linda Hill-MacDonald began her coaching career at the high school level. At that time, more than 30 years ago, "coach" was not a full-time job for women, and she also worked as a high school teacher.

Linda Hill-MacDonald, UB’s new women’s basketball coach, has seen her career evolve right along with the world of women’s sports.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

Now, as the new head coach of the UB women's basketball team, Hill-MacDonald has seen her career evolve right along with the world of women's sports, coaching full-time for several Division I athletic programs and even the WNBA.

"I was probably the exception in that I had many opportunities to play sports available to me in high school," says Hill-MacDonald, a former three-sport star in the Philadelphia area. "It was a given that the top male athletes would be going to college on an athletic scholarship. You didn't give it a second thought as a female athlete."

Title IX, the landmark legislation that required equal athletic opportunities for female high school and college students, passed in 1972, after she graduated from college. At that time, she found a job as a high school coach and teacher.

"Coaching is teaching—it's just specialized teaching," she says. "I love to teach. It's what I always looked to do growing up. Basketball has given me the opportunity to teach every day in a specialty I love."

From there, Hill-MacDonald moved on to become the second coach of Temple University's women's basketball team, and the first woman to coach the team full time. Although she had enjoyed being a high school teacher, coaching proved to be the perfect career choice for Hill-MacDonald, taking her all over the United States, as well as to Europe, and letting her affect the lives of young people.

"I really enjoy working with the young women and having an opportunity to have an influence and an impact at a transitional point in their lives," she says.

Young women's lives, and the choices available to them, have changed immensely over the course of her coaching career, Hill-MacDonald notes. The changes brought on by Title IX have been immense—although slower and otherwise different than she might have expected.

"I don't think anybody at that time realized the long-term impact or that it would take as long for it to have an impact," she recalls. "There were certainly visionaries who had an idea of what the possibilities were, but I'm not sure any of us fully realized it.

"The women who engage in athletic competition today—the vast majority of them have no idea about the evolution of the sport and of basketball in the past 30 years," she adds. "They haven't had to fight the battles. Those things were done by the coaches and athletes who came before them."

Women today who excel in athletics wouldn't lead the same lives without Title IX and its legacy, she points out.

"Those who choose to participate—how different would their lives be if they couldn't make that choice," she says. "And for years, those choices weren't available to them."

Hill-MacDonald coached at Temple from 1980 to 1990, vastly improving the team's record and twice winning the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year designation. From there, she went on to lead the University of Minnesota women's team to its first-ever NCAA appearance during her seven-year coaching stint. She then became the first head coach of the WNBA's Cleveland Rockers, leading that team from 1997 to 1999. She coached the team to the Eastern Conference Championship Title and a trip to the playoffs. More recently, Hill-MacDonald worked as an assistant coach at the University of South Carolina and as an assistant coach with the Washington Mystics of the WNBA.

That varied experience—college and professional ball, different levels of collegiate play—leaves Hill-MacDonald feeling uniquely prepared to take UB forward.

"All of these experiences have provided me with insight and vision for possibilities," she says. "I can build a vision that's appropriate for what people call the mid-major level of play."

In what little spare time she has, Hill-MacDonald enjoys riding horses and working with stained glass. She owns two horses that live on her property in southern Erie County.

"They're just pleasure horses," Hill-MacDonald says of her large pets. "I just do trail riding, no competitive riding at all."

"It's been wonderful," she says of her new home and neighbors. "The people are very warm and friendly. I've always been fortunate where I lived to have wonderful neighbors, and here in New York has been no exception."

She has two children, 27-year-old Kelli and 32-year-old Scott, both of whom live in the Philadelphia area, where she grew up, went to college and began her coaching career. A native of Morton, Pa., Hill-MacDonald graduated from West Chester University in 1970, where she earned honors in basketball, lacrosse and field hockey, and was named the school's Outstanding Female Athlete. She was inducted into West Chester's Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989.

At this point, Hill-MacDonald says it's too early to speculate on how UB's women's team will fare this season. The team finished a disappointing 4-24 last year.

"I don't want to look ahead and predict how their record might change, because I haven't even seen this team play five-on-five at this point," she says during an interview earlier this month with the Reporter.

As per NCAA regulations, team members could only work together on skills for four hours each week until the official start of practice on Saturday, when they began practicing as a full team for up to 20 hours per week. The team will open its season at home on Nov. 18 as part of a doubleheader (men's and women's teams) against Canisius College.

"My hope for this team is that they will think differently about themselves and their ability as a team," Hill-MacDonald says. "If we as a staff can change that thinking, it will lead to more success in terms of wins and losses."