Pioneering Sterling girls hoops coach Strong dies

The 1976-77 Sterling girls basketball team won the first girls state championship sanctioned by the IHSA.

BYRON – Sterling High School’s legendary “Golden Girls” on the basketball court all came to be with the guidance of Sue Strong and her knowledge of the game.

Strong, the head coach of the Golden Warriors’ 1976-77 state championship girls basketball program and longtime gym teacher, died Sunday at the Generations at Neighbors nursing home. She was 82.

The “Golden Girls,” as the players on the championship team came to be known over the years, were the first to win a title in an Illinois High School Association-sanctioned tournament. Sterling High won all 21 games in the historic season, culimating in a 52-38 victory over Washington on April 2, 1977 at Illinois State University’s Horton Fieldhouse.

In four months, the 45th anniversary of the historic season will be observed, but Strong lived to see the 50th of the landmark Title IX law that helped provide equal opportunities for girls in athletics.

Former Sterling girls basketball coach Sue Strong watches a game from the bench. Strong led the 1976-77 Golden Girls to the first-ever IHSA-sanctioned girls state championship.

Born in suburban Park Ridge, Strong attended high school when Girls Athletic Association programs were the only avenue of sports, and later taught and coached in GAA prorgrams. Her career spanned from the days where girls didn’t have an opportunity to compete on an athletic stage like the boys did, to the rise of girls sports in the IHSA.

Strong came to teach in Sterling in 1966 after starting her career at Northeast High School in rural Goose Lake, Iowa. Having played basketball at Simpson College in Iowa, Strong was chosen to lead Sterling High’s first female group of competitive players. The program started in the fall of 1973, and her teams didn’t lose a game for the first two seasons.

After the state championship season, Strong’s teams also took third place in 1979, fourth in 1983, and had another state final berth in 1980, all before a playoff classification system was enacted. When she stepped down as head coach in 1985, she had 250 wins against 84 losses, and had kept the Golden Warriors program in the upper echelon of Illinois the whole time. She retired from education in 1994, having taught girls physical education at Sterling for 28 years – all with longtime colleague and best friend Sharon Douthit, who cared for Strong in her later years.

With Strong’s success came plenty of honors: She was the Illinois Basketball Association’s Coach of the Year in 1977, a national Coach of the Year in 1979, and was inducted into the Sterling High School Athletic Hall of Fame. She also coached in the national AAU Junior Olympic program from 1980 to 1982.

Strong’s athletes had plenty of basketball success after high school. From the state title team alone, six played at Division I colleges: Jolene Leseman (Iowa State), Fran Smith (Illinois State), Dawn McKinzie (Wisconsin-LaCrosse, Illinois State), Marche Harris (Eastern Illinois, Illinois State), Dawn Smith (Northern Illinois), and Amy Eshleman (Miami of Ohio). Pat McKinzie, Sterling’s first star of the pre-title teams, led Illinois State to three national championships and took her game overseas to France and Germany. Leseman later coached at Sauk Valley Community College for 25 seasons.

Strong is survived by six cousins. No services will be held, and private burial at Mt. Emblem Cemetery in Elmhurst will be at a later date; a celebration of life is planned for early April.

Cody Cutter

Cody Cutter

These days, Cody Cutter primarily writes for Sauk Valley Media's "Living" magazines and specialty publications in northern Illinois, including the monthly "Lake Lifestyle" magazine for Lake Carroll. He also covers sports and news on occasion; he has covered high school sports in northern Illinois for more than 20 years in online and print formats.