Where Are They Now?

Lynne Reif

Women's Basketball, 1985-88

Women’s basketball has come a long way since head coach Geno Auriemma first came to UConn.

The team has won five national championships and have been ranked first in the country for several weeks over various seasons.

When Auriemma first arrived in Storrs in 1985, the team did not enjoy the success that it does now.

Lynne Reif was a member of that first team in 1985-86, but was not a scholarship player.  She simply loved playing basketball in high school in her native Clayton, Mo., so she figured she would give it a try in college.

She came to all the team tryouts and worked very hard. Auriemma had told her that if she made the team he would give her a call. After a couple of weeks passed by with no phone call, Reif decided she’d call Auriemma and ask him if she made it or not.

As Lynne described: “I called him up and asked him ‘Hey Coach, did I make the team?’ and he answered me, ‘Lynne, go get your basketball shoes’ and that’s when I knew I had made it.”

Reif described the first couple years with Auriemma as nerve-wracking, and somewhat disappointing, since he had all of these goals he wanted to accomplish. He had to push the team to their limits.

“He was always talking about national championships, something that wasn’t discussed too often around the women’s basketball team back then,” says Reif.

The team was not used to the rigorous coaching they were now receiving, so they had to work extra hard. Reif didn’t play much her first couple of years and considered herself to be second-string. By Reif’s junior year at UConn, she had received a basketball scholarship and the position of team captain.

As Reif looks back on her team now, and all of the accomplishments that only seemed to be dreams when she was at UConn, she feels grateful for the wonderful coaches and teammates she met over her college years. She is proud to be a part of the tradition that UConn has made for itself around the women’s basketball program.

After her undergraduate college education was completed, Reif went on to get her master’s degree in psychology and worked as a clinical therapist for several years. During her last few years as a clinical therapist, she became the director of the center she was working for.

In 1999, Reif went on to work as a sixth-grade counselor. At the school, she started a program called Empowering Young Women to help young girls overcome the stress and pressures they are constantly put under to be a certain stereotype and to realize that they are each unique and beautiful in their own way.

She has also organized a gathering for the young girls and their mothers called “The Beauty of Me,” which will begin very soon.

One of Reif’s proudest accomplishments, however, is the song she has just recently written. During her junior year here at UConn, Reif took up guitar and started singing. She would sit in her room and write songs, and eventually joined a band. She played with the same band for eight years, and now has four CDs out in stores with her voice and songs that she wrote on them.

After leaving that band, she continued to write songs and sing whenever she got the opportunity. Then, one day, Reif read a book called “Follow the River” by James Thom. This book was about a young woman who had traveled almost 1,000 miles to freedom. Lynne was so inspired by this story, that she wrote a song called “Mary’s Hope”, and played it at her school. Reif also sent out a copy of her song to James Thom, the author of “Follow the River”, with a note telling him how much he had inspired her.

Thom wrote her back and told her an interesting piece of information – the summer that her song came out was the 250^th anniversary of the actual events that occurred in his book. Reif could not believe what she was hearing, and has kept in touch with Thom from time to time.

Word of the song spread widely throughout Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia, and somehow made it back to the ancestors of the woman from the book she read. The family of this amazing woman wanted to meet up with Reif, so she went to see them at a family reunion.

She became very close friends with this family, and still remains close with them today. When asked about the personality and character of the family, Reif replied, “They were very big on family – they don’t take it for granted”.          

Lynne’s advice to the young women of the country, the scholar-athletes, and students of UConn is “Don’t ever be afraid to be yourself, and be true to yourself.”

As we have seen, the incredible athletes of UConn go on to do even bigger and better things in life. Although she had a small beginning, Reif will not have a small end. Just like the women’s basketball team, many of Lynne’s accomplishments and wildest dreams have come true, but she still has many more to go.

- Simone Jamison