History Sports · Virginia
Brenda Bonheim built Liberty’s first women’s teams
The Lynchburg coach’s record includes program beginnings and administrative work that helped women’s athletics take root.
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Image and publication standards →At a glance
- Women’s basketball began in 1975–76; volleyball followed in 1976.
- Bonheim entered Liberty’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013.
In this story
Two beginnings in the 1970s
Brenda Bonheim’s place in Lynchburg sports history begins with the work of making teams possible. Liberty’s official Hall of Fame biography says she arrived at what was then Liberty Baptist College in 1974.
She helped start women’s basketball in the 1975–76 season and volleyball in 1976, serving as the inaugural head coach of both programs.
Those dates describe institutional beginnings. A first team needs a roster, practice time, opponents and someone to organize the season.
Remembering a founding coach therefore widens the story beyond the eventual trophy case. It gives the community a way to recognize the work that must happen before a program can accumulate an athletic record.
Coaching and a place in administration
Bonheim also became Liberty’s first senior woman administrator, a role she held from 1977 until her retirement from athletics in 2000. The university credits Bonheim and women’s basketball coach Dr. Linda Farver with helping initiate Liberty’s membership in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.
Its women’s programs competed there before the athletics department’s transition to full NCAA Division I status in 1988.
Liberty inducted Bonheim into its Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013. That is a named university honor with a specific induction year.
Her husband, Bob Bonheim, had entered the same hall’s inaugural class in 2009.
A fuller regional sports memory
For Gretna-area readers who follow college athletics in Lynchburg, this history connects today’s recognizable team names to earlier organizational choices. A women’s sports archive can preserve its first schedule and founding coach alongside its championship seasons.
Bonheim’s record supplies a concrete example: coaching, association membership and sustained representation in administration all belong in the account of how a program grew.
Sources & verification
Official biography of the founding coach, her administrative tenure and 2013 induction.
Read the sourceUniversity account of its 2013 Hall of Fame class and the beginnings of women’s basketball and volleyball.
Read the sourceThis article was written with AI assistance from the linked sources. No firsthand interview or visit is implied. Source dates and limits are identified in the reporting. Advertising does not determine editorial coverage. Request a correction or read our standards.
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