In Her Own Words: Bonnie Bernstein

The Fall 2023 issue of ONE MARYLAND Magazine recently arrived in the mailboxes of Terrapin Club members. ONE MARYLAND features stories of strength and perseverance, of determination and spirit. These stories define our athletics program, and this new magazine will allow us to share these stories with you. Over the next few weeks, we will be rolling out these stories on umterps.com as a preview of what you will find in ONE MARYLAND. To receive future issues of the magazine when they debut, please join the Terrapin Club. We hope you enjoy.

My gymnastics career at the University of Maryland nearly ended before it started.

First meet freshman year in Cole Field House, I took an awkward landing on my balance beam dismount. Right foot was turned out. Rest of my leg was turned in. SNAP! Shredded ACL. Dr. Stan Levine, the legendary orthopedic surgeon, used one of my hamstring tendons to reconstruct my knee, but cautioned afterward my competition days might be over.

What Dr. Levine didn't realize was his projection fueled a devout mission to prove him wrong. An injury dictating my retirement? Non-starter. I relentlessly powered through a grueling rehab process that, thanks to our incredible trainer Sandy Worth, enabled me to not only compete the following season, but eventually graduate from walk-on to full scholarship athlete and team captain.

It wasn't until well into a broadcast journalism career that had me covering Michael Jordan's Bulls for ESPN at age 25, and CBS Sports-bound three years later, that I made the profound connection: the drive, commitment, mental toughness and resilience I developed as a student-athlete were paramount to my swift ascension in a cutthroat, male-dominant industry. It's a notion statistically supported by a recent Ernst and Young study, revealing 94% percent of all female C-suite executives played sports, with more than half of those women competing in college. NINETY-FOUR PERCENT! An eye-popping number of women leveraging life skills learned through athletics to summit their professional mountains. The aforementioned attributes, along with traits like teamwork, leadership, accountability, discipline, and time management, paving the path.

Funny thing is, while we, as athletes, have a pretty decent grasp on the physical, mental and social benefits of participation, most of us don't think about "the long game" in real time. This delayed realization is the catalyst for my Audible series, She Got Game: Inspiring Women, Inspired by Sports, profiling business leaders, entertainers and newsmakers who've harnessed life skills honed through sports to achieve career success. While Laila Ali and Shawn Johnson are world class athletes-turned-thriving entrepreneurs, She Got Game's other guests weren't elite competitors. And that's a critical point: you don't need to be a next-level jock to reap the rewards of participation. Chelsea Clinton quips she was a youth soccer and softball player with "endless energy and enthusiasm, not always matched by sufficient coordination or skill," yet touts how sports and intense dance training taught her about grit, resilience and goal-setting. Emmy Award-winning actor Aisha Tyler, an ex-Dartmouth rower, grades her athletic prowess as "good, but never great, just out there for the experience." Perseverance, however, has become Aisha's Hollywood calling card, and she shares a great story about how "coachability" was vital during her life-changing stint on Friends as professor Charlie Wheeler, a love interest of Joey and Ross. While some guest stars struggled with the pressure of appearing on an iconic sitcom, Aisha thrived. "I was so accustomed to getting notes from my coaches about how to improve," she told me, "I never took [feedback on-set] personally."

Part of She Got Game's mission is to broaden how we define the power of athletics. While we rightfully celebrate the profound impact of Title IX on women's sports participation, we can't turn a blind eye to the fact girls exit sports at a higher frequency and earlier age than boys. The "why" factors are varied-- access issues, lack of college scholarship or pro opportunities, the impact of puberty on our bodies, and, yes, the negative stigma that still exists around girls playing sports. But if we, as parents, coaches, and adults of influence emphasize sports' long-term benefits with young women, perhaps, when at that crossroad, they'll choose to stay, with the understanding that what they're learning on the fields of play tees them up for the game of life.

I still vividly recall those days in College Park, hobbling on crutches in the dead of winter from New Leonardtown, through Frat Row, all across campus for classes and rehab. The agonizing process of breaking up the scar tissue surrounding my knee, after two months in a full leg brace. Rebuilding a fully-atrophied leg to endure the pounding of gymnastics. It was a brutal stretch where, at times, I contemplated leaving school and moving home to New Jersey.

Thankfully, my inner-athlete prevailed. Because I can say with the utmost certainty that absent of everything sports has taught me, my life, and career, would look very... very... different.