Chatham Native Beth Burns Basks in Success With San Diego State

Long before Beth Burns was busy leading the San Diego State Aztecs women's basketball team to this year's Sweet 16, she was playing basketball at Chatham Borough High School in the mid-1970s, going up against Chatham Township High School—the two had not yet merged—in drama-filled matchups.

"We had to hate the township," Burns said this week from the Final Four in San Antonio, right before she watched the University of Connecticut women's team complete its second straight undefeated season by knocking off Stanford in the national championship game Tuesday. "That was just part of your life. You had to."

Burns has come a long way since her high school days. She is now the head women's coach at San Diego State, which reached the Sweet 16 as a No. 11 seed in the tournament after knocking off sixth-seeded Texas and third-seeded West Virginia in the first two rounds. The team eventually fell to second-seeded Duke in the Memphis regional.

Burns' most successful season as a head coach, at least on paper, was just the latest achievement in a coaching career that has its roots in Chatham. Her parents, both New Jersey natives, wanted their children—Burns has a sister—to grow up in the suburbs.

"It's just a great town to grow up in, and I think that's something that you don't know at the time, because it's the only thing you know," Burns said. "I just feel we're really forutnate to be raised in a community that's so education-oriented."

Going to college, she said, was always "a priority," and she felt Chatham-students "were educated as such." So Burns took the town's teaching's to heart, eventually going on to play basketball at Ohio Wesleyan, where she estimated 80 percent of the population was from the East Coast. Some of her Chatham classmates from the Borough High School Class of 1975 also went to school there.

But while in college, Burns knew she wanted to coach. And so she signed on to be a graduate assistant on the women's team at Ohio State in 1980 while she was earning a Master's degree. Tara Vanderveer, who is now Stanford's head coach (and who led the team to this year's finals against UConn), was preparing to begin her first year as the head boss at Ohio State at the time, and took Burns on to her staff for free.

"I believe I said I would do it for nothing, which shows I wasn't a business major," Burns said.

She eventually moved on to assistant coaching jobs at East Carolina, Colorado and North Carolina State before taking her first head coaching job with San Diego State in 1989. Her first stint there lasted until 1997, when she came full circle and was hired by Ohio State to be the Buckeye head coach.

She spent five years there before being fired, but after several years out of head coaching made her way back to San Diego State, when in 2005 she assumed her previous role under the same university president Stephen Weber, who she said "really values athletics."

She gives no indication that she would like to coach anywhere else.

"I like it here—this is a great fit for me," said Burns. "I get to run on the beach every day. It's a great place."

Burns has cultivated the program since she started. In 2005, the team went 0-16 in Mountain West Conference play, but she kept recruiting the players she wanted, and eventually, the Aztecs went to the NCAA Tournament in 2009.

After they won their second straight MWC title this year, the team had its success in the tournament.

"[It was] just huge win after huge win after huge win," Burns said.

And the success did not end there—on Thursday, senior Jene Morris became the first San Diego State player to ever be taken in the WNBA Draft. She was picked by the Indianapolis Fever in the first round.

The draft, which was held in the Meadowlands in Secaucus, afforded Burns an opportunity to come back to her home state. She'll be able to visit family members today and tomorrow, some of whom she hasn't seen for a very long time.

"Nobody ever lets me come to New Jersey to visit, because they want to come to San Diego," Burns said.

But Burns said she still keeps in touch with her Chatham classmates, many of whom she calls "lifelong friends." People who she hasn't seen in 20 years, she said, have been emailing her, wishing her and the team luck and sharing in her success.

Burns, however, can't rest just yet. The team's success this year could help the Aztecs attract higher-profile recruits, and so before she went to the Final Four in Texas, Burns was in other parts of the state and in Oklahoma recruiting. She's going to be doing similar activities for the next month or so, and when she comes back to San Diego, she will attend various banquets and dinners in the team's honor.

But Burns isn't complaining. Once May rolls around, she'll be able to relax a little bit.

"When I take a nap," she says, "it's going to be a good one."