By Eli Meschko
Media & Communications Coordinator
It’s not every day that someone had the chance to meet and chat with the late legendary John Wooden — except for 1969 Briar Cliff physical education graduate Mary Jo Huismann.
This didn’t just happen by coincidence; it was earned. Well-earned.
Huismann, a legendary women’s basketball coach in Ohio, racked up 769 wins as the head coach at her alma mater, Mother of Mercy High School, and Talawanda High School over the course of her career.
She was inducted into the Ohio Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame. She was also named the National Coach of the Year by the Women’s Sports Foundation in 1996 and received The Morgan Wootten Lifetime Achievement Award and John Wooden Legacy Award, both in 2024.
Huismann can be defined as a pioneer not just in women’s basketball, but in women’s sports in general.
But the path to success wasn’t always straightforward.
When she graduated from Mother of Mercy in 1965, she hadn’t even played a single game of high school basketball. It wasn’t that she chose not to play; the opportunities for organized women’s sports, especially basketball, just weren’t there yet.
When she went off to college, Briar Cliff didn’t yet have an official women’s basketball team, and it wouldn’t have one until the 1969-70 season, a year after she graduated.
While she never had the chance to play organized five-on-five basketball at Briar Cliff, she and a bunch of girls, mostly physical education students, would head to the gym in the evenings after class to play basketball. She also excelled in many other sports for the Chargers, including volleyball, softball, tennis and badminton.
“After I graduated, I came back home [to Ohio] because six-on-six was just ending here, and a lot of coaches coaching back then didn’t want to coach five-on-five,” Huismann said. “That’s how I got to coaching at the University of Cincinnati right away. The person who was coaching there didn’t want to coach five-on-five.
“I went to two or three clinics a year [at the beginning of my career] to keep learning five-on-five,” Huismann said. “Now, they don’t have as many clinics because you can just look everything up online. But then, you had to work at it a little more and try new things.”
In 1969, she stepped directly into the head coaching role at the University of Cincinnati (UC) while simultaneously working toward her master’s degree in education and teaching certificate. After graduating, she filled in as head coach, while also teaching, for one season at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, as the current coach was on sabbatical leave for the year.
Starting in 1972, she accepted a position at Mother of Mercy as the athletic director, full-time physical education and health teacher, as well as the head coach of basketball, volleyball and track and field.
In her first two years at Mother of Mercy, she also volunteered as the head women’s coach at UC. UC didn’t have a coach at the time, and if she hadn’t volunteered, the women’s team would have been forced to disband. So, she took on the task, driving back and forth between the two schools — making every practice, game and the classes she taught.
This was really only possible because neither school played many games, at least not as many as today’s women’s basketball teams do. UC played 12 games a season, while Mother of Mercy only played nine. Yet, no one else was ambitious enough to coach two teams at the same time.
Traveling back and forth was hectic. Not just that, but she was in charge of junior varsity, varsity and the two freshman teams at Mother of Mercy.
“It was a pretty crazy schedule,” Huismann said. “I actually got some of my UC players to help me coach the freshman and junior varsity teams. Things just fell into place.”
Though the dominos started to fall in order, her career didn’t start off with all the success that you might expect. Many of the girls she coached didn’t know the fundamentals or rules of basketball. To be fair, it’s not the same as today, where girls grew up playing the game; many of her players hadn’t played in grade school.
Huismann had to start from scratch — teaching the fundamentals: how to catch a pass, how to step into a pass and the footwork when taking a layup. She knew her teams were a big step behind everyone else, so she focused on teaching her players how to play tough defense and outhustle the other team.
This ended up paying dividends. Ohio held its first state high school basketball tournament for women in 1976. Just four years later, Huismann led Mother of Mercy to the Class AAA State Championship game.
She and Mother of Mercy would end up returning to the finals in 1989 and 1990, ultimately losing, but Huismann showcased her ability to build up a program. From 1972 to 2018, she accumulated a 696-337 overall record at Mother of Mercy.
The school won 18 Greater Cincinnati League Championships, 21 Sectional Championships and 15 District titles. It also had 15 Regional appearances with three Regional titles, as well as three state title game appearances during Huismann’s 46-year tenure.
“I remember people would say, ‘Well, how did you beat us? You’re not that good,’” Huismann said. “I would always say, ‘No, we’re not as good, but we hustle, play faster and play harder.’ At the state tournament, people would say, ‘You’re the first ones who could guard everywhere.’ It’s like, yeah, you do what you have to do with the talent you have.”
Mother of Mercy ended up closing in 2018, leaving Huismann in limbo. She was really considering retirement and was very close to it. But there was a position at Talawanda High School that had just reopened. A couple of local reporters called her asking her if she was considering it, so she called Talawanda to see if they were interested.
They were, so she took the job. Her first couple of years were very reminiscent of her first years at Mother of Mercy — she had to build the program. While they struggled at first, winning a handful of games in her first few years, Talawanda turned things around, and in Huismann’s five years in charge, they went 64-51 overall.
Huismann was named the Greater Cincinnati Basketball Hall of Fame Co-Girls Coach of the Year in 2022-23, the District 15 Division I Coach of the Year in 2023 and the Southwest Ohio Conference (SWOC) Coach of the Year in 2022 and 2023.
With the second-most wins in Ohio girls' basketball coaching history, her impact within the game is undeniable, but her influence on the game itself, especially for girls, cannot be overlooked.
Huismann organized and directed the first girls summer leagues in Cincinnati in the 1980s, which grew to over 500 participants in that decade. She is the Co-Director of the Cincinnati Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball club, serves on the National AAU Basketball Advisory Board and has directed numerous state AAU tournaments. She also directed National AAU tournaments in 1991 and 1996, but most of her involvement stopped after 1996 due to Ohio state rules not allowing high school coaches to coach AAU teams.
After that, she became much more involved in the state and local coaches’ associations. She helped build a very active Women’s Sports Association in Cincinnati after the National Women’s Sports Association became popular. Nowadays, schools and colleges have all stepped up women’s involvement in sports.
She even took a travel basketball team to Alaska in 1995.
These are all fantastic achievements, but for Huismann, her biggest personal achievement has been making an impact on the young athletes themselves. For the past 43 years, she has conducted her own basketball camps for grade school girls.
“The younger girls are fun,” Huismann said. “They’re so fun because they’re so eager. They come in and they want to learn. You do the drills, just simple drills, and they get so excited. They have so much fun, and I have just as much fun.”
It reminded her of the players she first coached at Mother of Mercy. Even though those were high school girls, the eagerness to learn the game of basketball reminded her of why she got into this profession.
However, it was more than just making an impact on the court. For Huismann, being able to be a crucial figure in her players’ development as people was just as important as all of the wins and accolades.
She recalled one of her former players, Siobhan Zerilla, who only played for her for one year at Mother of Mercy. Zerilla ended up playing at Wilmington College, a Division III school in Wilmington, Ohio, and led the team to a Division III National Championship. Now, she is a contractor in Florida.
Very recently, Zerilla and Huismann’s paths crossed once again. This time wasn’t like the old coach-player relationship they once shared. This time, Zerilla ran up to her and gave her a big hug — thanking her.
“I’m like, ‘You’re [Zerilla] the last person I’d think would ever do that,’” Huismann said. “She said she never got the chance to thank me for making her who she is. She told me, ‘The only reason why I went to college is because you told me that I should.’”
There are plenty of moments like this one, where Huismann had a positive influence on the kids she coached. While these ended up as feel-good stories, it wasn’t always smooth sailing.
Huismann had to push her players and find ways to motivate them. Throughout her entire coaching career, she had to constantly try to figure out each individual, not just as athletes, but as people.
Some didn’t take hard coaching as easily as others. Some didn’t enjoy being pushed. As society has evolved since she started coaching, she’s had to evolve how she approaches coaching.
“You learn to talk to some kids more,” Huismann said. “The reality is that you don’t get to all of them. But how you talk to your players is what is important, and how you respect them matters.”
The game of women’s basketball has also evolved so much since she first started. Kids back then wouldn’t miss summer workouts or practices. Nowadays, some take vacations or are busy doing other things.
Back then, parents didn’t shout instructions from the stands. But as the years passed, fathers began to “coach” from the stands, and now, mothers who once played the sport do the same.
It was challenging trying to adjust to new things on the fly, but Huismann holds no ill will toward anyone or anything — things change, and change is good. If anything, hearing the mothers yell at her showed how much women’s basketball has evolved over her 51 years of coaching.
“Right now, the level keeps getting higher due to the girls playing year-round,” Huismann said. “The WNBA is just great now, and I think it will change the game tremendously. The same thing is going on in other women’s sports. All women’s sports are improving, and people want to watch them.”
It’s a future she’s proud to have helped shape, not by chasing attention, but by doing the hard, often thankless work of building from the ground up. What started as a career born out of opportunity and a willingness to take on a challenge few others would, grew into a lifelong mission to grow the game and empower young women.
Mary Jo Huismann didn’t just coach basketball. She built programs, shaped communities, and created a lasting impact both on and off the court. From teaching players who didn’t even know how to pivot to watching her former players become champions, leaders and professionals, her legacy extends far beyond the winning column.
Now, she hasn’t fully left the game — not yet, anyway. But she’s decided to take a step back from her head coaching duties and will serve as an assistant coach at Talawanda for the 2025-26 season.
Despite all the accolades, accomplishments and success, she never once thought that she “made it.” Not even when she talked with John Wooden at the 2003 McDonald’s All-American game, where she was the head coach of Team East.
“It was funny. The elevator door opened, and it was him, and I said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’” Huismann said. “He said, ‘Yeah, who are you?’ I told him, and we actually ended up eating lunch, just him and I. We had a great conversation about our coaching careers. He told me he loved watching the women’s game because of how pure it is. It was just really good.”
Writer’s Note: I wasn’t able to fit everything from Mary Jo’s career into the flow of the story. Please see below for a full list of her accomplishments, as of June 18, 2025.
Head High School basketball coach for past 46 years at Mother of Mercy High school: