Built For Success: All-Female Coaching Staff Propels Maryland Into NCAA Tournament

Tournament time is here, and the Terps are ready to open the final chapter of their strong 2025-26 season. Built by an all-female coaching staff, Maryland’s tournament spot has been built by a group well worth highlighting during Women’s History Month. 

“Having strong women to look up to shows a lot about who we are,” Saylor Poffenbarger said. “When you come in every day and get to learn from strong women who are mothers and leaders in society, it's very empowering.”

Maryland’s a program helmed by a leader who’s no stranger to success. In her 24 years directing the Terps, Brenda Frese has collected 21 seasons with 20+ wins, including a streak of 19 straight seasons from 2004-05 to 2022-23. Maryland has won 30 or more games seven times under Frese, including its National Championship season in 2005-2006

Frese’s coaching tree speaks for itself, with countless players moving into head-coaching roles at other schools, continuing to grow Coach B’s brand of talented basketball nationwide. In 2025-26 alone, Maryland faced both Towson and Washington — two schools being led by Laura Harper and Tina Langley, who either played or coached under Frese. 

“Any time you can work alongside women coaching women, you're learning a lot from other strong, powerful women,” assistant coach Kaitlynn Fratz said. “When you know you're supported and understood in an environment, everybody's able to elevate each other, support each other, and it just brings a different lens of natural understanding.”

Frese’s staff this season has consisted of assistant coaches Fratz, Carley Kuhns, Lindsey Spann, Jessica Imhof, and Noelle Cobb, while Ryland Adkins has served as Executive Director of Operations and Chief of Staff.

"This is one of the most amazing staffs I've ever worked with,” Frese said. “They work tirelessly and do all the little things behind the scenes. We are in the business of mentoring and teaching young people - that's why we are all in coaching. They are amazing role models and teachers for our young women."

Fratz said that as a staff, they lean on the players just as much as the players lean on their coaches. It’s a well-balanced mixture of experience, leadership, and respect that’s led to such a successful season.

“We’re able to provide that role model aspect,” Fratz said. “Confidence comes from knowing that the people around you have been in very similar situations at different levels, and what a great staff does is fill in the pieces. No one person is going to be great at everything, but every woman on our staff can provide a different perspective from their respective journeys. When players can go to every single one of us and get something different — and when you piece all that together — you get something that's supernatural, genuine, and holistic.”

Maryland’s program and brand have built College Park into a hotspot for women’s college basketball and a place that’s produced WNBA-caliber players for decades. During players’ time as a Terp, they’re able to grow not only as basketball players, but as young women, ready to face whatever comes after graduation.

“I wanted to come to Maryland to play for a strong female,” Poffenbarger said. “Coach B builds a staff around her that reflects who she is: a strong woman who continues to build people up. If they want to go on to be an assistant coach or if they want to continue to play basketball or just strengthen themselves, it's really powerful that we have opportunities to do that here.”

“When you're able to come into this environment knowing that we're going to be as understanding as we can be, it says a lot about our program,” Fratz said. “At the end of the day, we're going to take you from being 18 years old to giving you the life skills so that when you leave Maryland, you're going to be equipped to handle anything that life throws at you.”

With decades of experience playing and coaching at various levels, Maryland’s all-female staff has countless ways to help its players grow as young women and as basketball players. When the team comes together in big moments, as it has so often this season, it's able to rally around a program built on more than basketball.

“There's a shared level of understanding and empathy,” Fratz said. “With different ages, experiences and backgrounds within the staff and players, it brings a level of increased confidence. We know that being a woman is one of the best tools that you can have, and we all just have an overall understanding of everything that comes with being a woman in college basketball.”

When players choose to join the rich lineage of Maryland women’s basketball, Frese and her staff want them to know they're not just joining a team but a family centered on uplifting one another, building strong bonds, and molding women who can change the world. 

“We want our players to be proud of where they came from,” Fratz said. “You’re not making a four-year decision to come here, you’re making a 40+ year decision. You know we’re going to be in your corner, regardless of if you’re still wearing the uniform or not. I think knowing that you have a group of women that's always going to believe in you and be there for you brings so much confidence into your life.”