It is a homecoming of sorts for Barbara Stevens, one of the country’s most successful women’s basketball coaches, as she returns to the place her coaching career began — Clark University. Since first arriving on campus as an assistant coach in the 1976-1977 season, Stevens experienced nothing but success. That year, the previously unknown Cougars captured the Massachusetts Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (MAIAW) Division III State Championship with a 14-5 season.
The program continued to flourish after Stevens took the helm in 1977, claiming a trio of MAIAW titles and five post-season appearances over the next six years. In 1982 and 1983, Clark won the NCAA Northeast Regional Championship, advancing to the national Final Four in both tries. At the close of the 1982-1983 season, her final one at Clark, Stevens was named District 1 Converse/Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) Coach of the Year; and one of her players (Margie O'Brien '83) was awarded Division III Champion Player of the Year. During her six-year stint at Clark, Coach Stevens posted an impressive 123-42 (.745) overall record. In addition to coaching basketball, she had an assortment of Athletic Department responsibilities, including directing the softball program (1977-1983) and serving as both coordinator of women’s athletics and assistant athletic director.
In 1983, Stevens left Clark for Division I University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she was head women’s basketball coach for three years. From there, she took the head coaching position at Division II Bentley College. In her 20-year tenure at Bentley, Stevens has posted a 554-102 (.845) overall record and earned 19 NCAA tournament berths, including 10 regional championships and five consecutive NCAA Division II Final Four appearances. In the 1989-1990 season, her squad advanced to the 1990 National Championship game. She has posted nine 30-win seasons, won 14 Northeast-10 regular season titles, and earned conference Coach of the Year honors twelve times. On the national stage, Stevens has three times been named the WBCA Division II National Coach of the Year (1992, 1999, 2001); and she received distinction as Division II Coach of the Year by the American Women’s Sports Federation (AWSF) following the 1988-1989 season. In April 2006, she was inducted into the WBCA Hall of Fame.
Stevens’ career has also been one of firsts, as she became the first women’s basketball coach in New England to reach the 500 career-win plateau. She was featured in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" when she was the first Division II women's basketball coach to reach 600 career wins. Stevens then became the first Division II coach -- and only the sixth overall -- to reach the coveted milestone of 700 career wins. Holding prestigious positions off the court as well, Stevens served as the 1994-1995 WBCA president. In 2014, her Bentley team won the program's first-ever national championship.
A three-sport athlete at Bridgewater State College, Stevens competed in basketball (three years, captain), softball (two years), and tennis (two years, captain). She graduated in 1976 with a health and physical education degree. In 1993, the Southbridge, Mass. native, who now resides in Waltham, Mass., was inducted into her alma mater’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
