From behind the arc to the Ivy League
Before Caitlin Clark, Mary Berdo raised eyebrows with her long 3-pointers and is now a top athletics administrator at Yale
The next time Mary Berdo visits Carver-Hawkeye Arena, she’ll be able to step inside the place, look up and see her number hanging from the rafters.
Not her jersey, mind you, just her number.
Berdo, who played basketball for the Hawkeyes in 1996-2001, wore Number 22 before Caitlin Clark did but it’s Clark’s honorary jersey that will hang above the court. On Feb. 2, Clark’s No. 22 will be retired in a ceremony after Iowa’s game against USC and superstar guard JuJu Watkins.
Berdo wasn’t the first to wear No. 22 at Iowa but she did have a different first – she launched, and made, those 30-foot three-point shots before Clark was even born. You could even make a case that Berdo, who grew up in Washington, Iowa, paved the way for Clark by helping Coach Lisa Bluder see that shooting from that far out maybe wasn’t such a terrible thing to do if you could make it.
“[Clark] had a little bit more success than I did,” said Berdo, an Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union Hall of Famer. “But yeah, once a gunner, always a gunner, right?”
Berdo didn’t stay in basketball after Iowa. She did, however, stay in athletics and found a different path to success. She is deputy director of athletics at Yale, overseeing four sports and working in a Division I world that is very different than the “Power 5” world that dominates the college landscape.
“I often tell people, ‘Don't confuse yourself, I didn't go to Yale, I work at Yale,’” Berdo said. “It's very different.
“In the Ivy League, you want to win, just as much as Iowa does, or Michigan does, or Florida. That’s why we're here. And I think we still want our young men and women to graduate, we want them to be good community members, but while we're here, let's win, right?”
Berdo didn’t set out to land in the Ivy League, it’s just how her career unfolded and in many ways is a long way from the farm she grew up on near Washington. It was on that farm that Berdo honed her shooting skills in the quintessential Iowa way – her father built a hoop on the slab of an old barn where Berdo would practice rather than do chores.
The slab was on a slight incline, so from a young age Berdo had to muster some extra oomph to shoot the ball. There’s nothing like a strong farm girl who had to shoot uphill to make a mark in Iowa girls’ basketball and Berdo certainly did. In her four years, Washington twice made the state tournament. And while launching three-pointers that would make fans gasp, Berdo finished her high school career as the state’s all-time scorer in the five-player game.
She was recruited to play at Iowa by Angie Lee and finished her career playing for Bluder. She was a reserve guard for the Hawkeyes and was part of the 2001 Big Ten championship team
When Berdo graduated, she didn’t have a career plan. She knew her career in sports was over but when former Iowa associate athletic director Jane Meyer suggested she could stay in sports as an administrator, Berdo was intrigued. She got a master’s in sport administration at Wisconsin-La Crosse, then began her career at Michigan. Since then, she’s had a hand in overseeing just about every sport and their championships at Michigan, the NCAA and Colgate before arriving at Yale in 2019.
At Yale, Berdo discovered they do things a little differently. For starters, the Ivy League does not offer athletic scholarships. Teams play fewer games because of a greater emphasis on academics. Most students aren’t on campus during the summer, busy with internships instead of working out and practicing.
“James Jones, our men’s basketball coach, always says, ‘You have to know where you work,’” Berdo said. “We’re supporting that balance of student and athlete, and if that’s frustrating to you, as James says, you have to know where you work. There are just some things that can’t be changed, and the sooner you can get over it and move on, the better, you know?”
Men’s basketball is one of the sports that Berdo oversees, and the Bulldogs had a great run last season as one of the March Madness darlings. Yale, in the tournament as a No. 13 seed, upset fourth-seeded Auburn, 78-76, before losing the next game to San Diego State.
While the joy of a March Madness Cinderella story remains, Yale and the other Ivy League schools are navigating a hugely shifting college landscape. The name, image and likeness (NIL) deals exist for Ivy League athletes, just on a different scale.
“There are none of the huge collectives. There are no million-dollar quarterbacks. There’s no pay for play,” Berdo said. “But they’re working camps, they’re on radio shows, they’re selling things. They’re getting spending money, which is important.”
And while many of the changes in college sports are upending programs throughout the country, the structure of the Ivy League creates some stability, Berdo said. Athletes don’t transfer in and out of programs and because they’re primarily there to get that Ivy League education, they stay all four years.
The relationship-building that comes in those four years has been a joyful part of Berdo’s job, and sometimes it comes with perks. In December, thanks to an alum who worked in the White House, Berdo was among Yale staff who got an insider tour that even included the West Wing. While holding a cup of coffee with the presidential seal on it near the Situation Room door, Berdo pondered just how far she’d come from shooting baskets uphill on a concrete barn slab in Washington, Iowa.
“It all goes back to the game of basketball,” she said. “It’s just a little orange ball, and I've been all over the world for work and basketball, and you know, I'm just so grateful for that.”
Hawkeyes’ lucky number? 22
Iowa might want to reconsider retiring No. 22, despite all of Clark’s success. It’s been a pretty good number for them over the years. Clark and Berdo weren’t the only Hawkeye No. 22s who found success. A few others:
Lisa Anderson. These days, Lisa Anderson is better known in Iowa as former Drake coach Lisa Stone. Stone played for Iowa in 1980-84, with her final season at Iowa being C. Vivian Stringer’s first with the Hawkeyes. Stone, a point guard, won the Big Ten Medal of Honor for academics and athletics. She’s currently coach at Washington University in St. Louis.
Samantha Logic. Logic was a first-team all-American guard for the Hawkeyes, playing in 2011-15. She was a first-round pick in the 2015 WNBA draft, chosen 10th by the Atlanta Dream. Logic continues to play pro basketball and is currently playing in Romania, where she still wears No. 22.
Kathleen Doyle. Doyle could be a trivia question for sports fans: Who was the Iowa Hawkeye who was Big Ten Player of the Year between Megan Gustafson and Caitlin Clark? Doyle played in 2016-20 and was drafted by the Indiana Fever in the second round after an all-American season. She played one season in the WNBA and two in Europe. She is now director of recruiting and player personnel at Virginia Tech.
Other Iowa players to wear No. 22: Shirley Vargason (1975-78), Joni Rensvold (1978-82), Jolynn Schneider (1984-88), Becky Shrigley (1988-92), Susan Koering (1993-97), Kristi Faulkner (2001-04) and Kelsey Cermak (2007-11).
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Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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Love this! Thanks so much
Really fun reading, Jane! Reading all of those women’s names was an enjoyable “blast to the past” for me. While my son studied at Iowa and he followed Jess Settles, Luke Recker, and Jeff Horner, I followed Mary Berdo with her intriguing three-pointers. I thought that, in many ways, she changed the women’s game.