RIP: Rene Portland, very successful, charismatic, charming, an outstanding leader, philanthropist, yet she was enigmatic in one area

… elevated Penn State women’s basketball to great heights

On Jan. 2, 2002, I first met Rene Portland, the head basketball coach at Penn State. She brought her team 65 miles west to Loretto, Pa., for a game with the St. Francis Red Flash women.

It was the first time that I had seen the Lady Lions in person. Despite being an alumnus, I had not paid a great deal of attention to the basketball programs at Penn State. So, my first question was simple: Why, coach, did you bring your Big Ten team to the home of a small, Northeast Conference school when most coaches would not risk being upset in such a situation?

When she answered, I realized how charming, charismatic, appealing, articulate, and intelligent she was. She turned her charm offensive on me, and it worked. I was thoroughly impressed and realized why she would eventually win 606 games in her 27-year Penn State career, 72 percent of her games, along with five Big Ten championships and six Atlantic-10 crowns.

Portland again brought the Lady Lions to the Stokes Center five years later, but then, her program was in a state of disarray. It would be an end to what appeared to be a great career.

Ms. Portland passed away last weekend at the age of 65 after a 3-year battle with peritoneal cancer. She was the mother of four children, one of whom played for her at Penn State. Her playing career gave her a great opportunity to begin a successful coaching career.

Three national titles at Immaculata

A native of Broomall, Delaware County, Portland matriculated at tiny Immaculata College in suburban Philadelphia in 1972. A small, Catholic school, she experienced immediate success for Coach Cathy Rush as they won three consecutive national championships and then a national runners-up spot in her senior year. The Macs finished with an 85-5 record over her four years, which eventually earned her a head coaching job at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia, where she experienced immediate success for two years. After two years at Colorado, she was hired at Penn State in 1980.

Portland is the sixth-winningest coach of all-time in NCAA Div. I women’s basketball (606-236).

Portland’s blind spot

When Portland returned to the Stokes Center in 2006, they faced a St. Francis program on the decline after making 10 appearances in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in 11 years. A Red Flash team that won just six games the previous season upset the Lady Lions, 74-66. That charming person whom I had interviewed five years earlier was absent from this post-game press conference on Nov. 28, 2006. In fact, we were not certain that she would even show up for it.

Earlier that year, a former player whom Portland had kicked off the team filed a suit in federal court against her, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and the university for removing her from the team because she believed that she was a lesbian. Jennifer Harris, a former Central Dauphin High School standout, had been a star in her freshman season before she ran into difficulty with Portland.

I did not know about the problems that Portland had been having at Penn State, but they started with a story in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1986. The focus of the story was about lesbian athletes in college athletics. The damning paragraph in it was this, “One of the first things Penn State coach Rene Portland brings up during a recruiting visit with a prospective player and her parents is lesbian activity. ‘I will not have it in my program,’ Portland said. ‘I bring it up and the kids are so relieved and the parents are so relieved. But they would probably go without asking the question otherwise, which is really dumb’.” Portland was determined to have no homosexual athletes in her program. No one is certain why she was adamant about that, though some believe that it is because of her rigid Catholic religious beliefs, but her stance started early in her tenure and did not end even when the university passed a non-discrimination against sexual orientation policy in 1991.

“Training Rules”

A documentary released in 2010 was scathing in its criticism of Portland. “Training Rules” showed the problems that Harris and others had with Portland once she learned that they were, or if she thought they were, lesbians. Harris eventually won her lawsuit against Portland and Penn State after an internal investigation by school officials found that she provided a "hostile, intimidating, and offensive environment" for Harris and other athletes. Portland resigned under pressure after the 2006-07 season.

What was appalling was that Penn State A.D. Curley, who spent some time in jail because of his involvement in the Jerry Sandusky sexual-abuse coverup at Penn State, allowed Portland to go 16 years knowing that she was violating the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

"Training Rules” follows the lives of three Indiana (Pa.) High School athletes who left Penn State and gave up their scholarships because of their homosexuality. It is actually gut-wrenching to watch.

Success

So, while Portland elevated the Penn State women’s basketball program on the court, what she did off it with her interference in her player’s private lives brought down her career.

In addition, I discovered one appalling stat of which I had never been exposed. In her Wikipedia bio, while pointing out that Portland’s players did graduate, a significant number did not. “[T]here were 106 players who concluded their time as Lady Lions under Portland. Of these, 57 completed 4-year college careers at Penn State; however, the rest (49, or nearly half) stayed less than four seasons. Thus, close to 46% of Portland’s players left Penn State while they still had college eligibility remaining.”

Conclusion

Portland never returned to coaching after leaving Penn State. She sort of disappeared and kept a very low profile after that. What is a shame is that despite being a great motivator, a great coach with a tremendous knowledge of the game, she could never get beyond her fixation on lesbian players. She never believed that what she did was wrong.