Lynden Christian’s Brenda Terpstra is Whatcom County’s lone female athletic director among 13 high school and college programs.
The longtime teacher, coach and administrator grew up in Lynden, attended LC as a child and graduated from Seattle Pacific University before embarking on a 37-year career in education.
She made multiple stops along a long path — including a one-year battle with cancer — that eventually guided her back to her alma mater in 2017, and she has overseen the coordination of all the school’s extracurricular activities ever since.
Terpstra’s position in a male-dominated field is unique, but she doesn’t dwell on it much. She has faced challenges based on gender in all phases of her career, starting when she coached girls basketball in her senior year of college.
She enjoys what she does, feels right at home doing it and can’t wait to get out of bed every morning.
“Each day I get up and I think ‘I get to go,’” Terpstra said. “That’s pretty awesome to be able to still say that 37 years after I’ve started my career.”
‘The lone female in a guy’s world’
Terpstra recalled returning home from LC one day when she was in sixth grade with a flyer for a youth boys basketball league.
She asked her father, who was an assistant coach for the boys high school team, why she couldn’t play.
“You will,” he responded.
Terpstra became the first girl to join the school’s youth boys league in 1974 before a girls league was ever established. She said she was raised to never think there were barriers to whatever she wanted to accomplish.
“I think I’ve always been the lone female in a guy’s world, in many ways,” Terpstra said.
A two-sport athlete at Seattle Pacific, Terpstra played basketball and competed in track and field before a knee injury ended her playing career. She was initially interested in nursing but pivoted to a bachelor’s degree in physical education while also earning her teaching credentials.
Her first coaching gig was at Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls Catholic school in Bellevue. It was there she honed her teaching abilities, as her players knew next to nothing about the game of basketball from the get-go.
From there, she moved to Centralia High School, where she taught physical education and coached basketball and volleyball from 1988–96.
As a coach, Terpstra occasionally found herself treated differently than her male counterparts. There were times when an opposing male coach would stand up, yell and walk onto the court, and it was brushed off, she recalled.
The moment she would begin to do the same, she was told to sit down.
“Do you use that as an excuse? Do you get mad and lump them all into one group, too?” Terpstra said. “Or do you just rise above and do the best you can, and continue to show that you are qualified as a person and try not to whine about it?”
On the flip side, Terpstra noted many of the men she has worked with over her career have been supportive and uplifting.
“I have had the privilege of working with some fantastic men over the years who have never held me back or treated me differently,” Terpstra said. “That’s not to say there haven’t been people that have, but I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of really good men.”
Terpstra, Amy Hendry (Lakewood), Marina Steinbrueck (Lopez Island), Linn Brooks (Darrington), Sharalee Burr (Mountlake Terrace) and Joann Fukuma (Shorewood) are the only female athletic directors at the school level in the entire Washington Interscholastic Activities Association District 1, which includes 53 high schools in Whatcom, Skagit and Snohomish counties.
“There’s just different things that we face as women,” Terpstra said. “If I’m competent to do the job, then just let me do the job and treat me as such.”
A 51-week battle
Terpstra was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1990 when she was 26 years old.
She was coaching and teaching in Centralia at the time and would commute to Seattle twice a month for treatment before being driven home by her parents to recover.
At first, Terpstra attempted to coach and teach at the same time, ultimately opting to just coach once the treatments began to wear on her.
Terpstra endured 16 chemo treatments over eight months, followed by maximum radiation to the chest and abdomen, and was declared cancer-free exactly one week before the year mark of her diagnosis.
“It was just short of going into my bones, so I was a very, very sick kid,” Terpstra said. “I’m grateful to still be here. I found out later my doctor wasn’t so sure I was going to make it.”
She returned to Lynden for a year to recover, getting to watch her younger brothers play high school sports in the meantime.
Her experience gave Terpstra a new outlook on life, particularly in working with her athletes and in her faith.
The treatments left lasting effects on her memory, among other things, which forced her to become extremely organized in her day-to-day operations.
“It also calmed down my temper,” Terpstra said. “I had a quick fuse … I like the person who I am better now than who I was before I went through the cancer.”
Returning home
After being declared cancer-free, Terpstra returned to Chehalis in 1991. She got a job as a physical education teacher and basketball coach at Mount Baker in 1996. She was also an assistant with the volleyball team for a year.
She coached at Mount Baker for five years, was a full-time teacher the next year due to some reshuffling of personnel, then became the athletic director in her seventh year at the school.
While there, she worked closely with current athletic director Ron Lepper, who also coaches football, wrestling and softball at the school.
“Oh, that was fun,” Terpstra said. “Ron is a fantastic person, and he is all about kids.”
The two worked closely together during Terpstra’s coaching career at Mount Baker, and that relationship grew during her 10-year tenure as the athletic director. Continuing to work in the same conference, they still bounce ideas off each other, Lepper said.
“[She] always did a good job of trying to do what was best for, not only our kids, but all the kids in the conference,” Lepper said.
Lepper took over the position in 2017, one year after Terpstra accepted the athletic director position at LC.
Terpstra regularly interacts with athletes who are the children of people she and her brother went to school with, which is what makes a school like LC special, she said. Greg Terpstra, her brother, is the head football and track and field coach at the school.
“This school only makes it because we have such a strong foundation of our parents and families — longtime supporters of Lynden Christian,” Terpstra said. “People don’t graduate from here and leave. They still stay connected to the school.”
Terpstra is also a member of the USA Softball Region 9 Hall of Fame. She was an umpire for 17 years in her free time, primarily on weekends, and she ended her career in that hobby by officiating the Japan Cup in 2017.
“It was kind of a great way to go out, to leave the umpiring, by doing a national tournament,” Terpstra said. “Right now I love what I do, so I don’t miss it that much.”
The life of an athletic/activities director keeps her plenty busy, with a total of 27 tasks in her job description. One of those is “other duties as assigned,” which is frequently exercised.
“That one keeps life interesting,” Terpstra said.
