BC Women's Basketball Coaches

Michele Durand Head Coach

Now in her 11th season at the helm of the Bluffton College women’s basketball program, Michele Durand brings intensity and high expectations to the 2000-01 basketball season. Durand returns her entire roster from last season’s team which finished third in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference. During the 1999-2000 season Durand brought her career win total up to 109 victories. Durand is just five wins shy of tying the all-time BC record for most wins, held by Kim Fischer as she racked up 114 wins from 1979-80 to 1989-90. Durand led her 1995-96 BC squad to a 16-9 record, the best win total by any BC women’s basketball team in the 32 seasons that the Beavers have taken the court. Also that season Bluffton won the Association of Mideast Colleges regular season and tournament championships. Durand earned a health, physical education and recreation degree from Bluffton in 1988 and went on to earn a master’s degree in physical education from Bowling Green State University in 1990. She has been on the faculty at BC since 1989 and is now the associate director of athletics and an assistant professor of HPER. She was named coach-of-the-year in the Western Buckeye Collegiate Conference in 1990-91 and in the AMC in 1995-96. She has also coached the women’s tennis team and cross country team at BC. In her playing days, Durand was a two-year All-Western Buckeye Collegiate Conference honorable mention selection. She is seventh on BC’s career assist list with 187 and she ranks 19th in career scoring with 609 points (in three years). Durand has also been inducted into the Toledo Whitmer High School Athletic Hall of Fame for her accomplishments in basketball, cross country and track. While at Whitmer Durand earned three varsity letters in basketball and was a first team All-Great Lakes League selection two years as well as an all-district honoree her senior year. She captained the squad her junior and senior seasons and was a four-year varsity performer in cross country and track.

Beth Klocke Assistant Coach

Assistant Coach Beth Klocke is in her second season with the Bluffton College coaching staff. A 1998 BC graduate, Klocke was a four-year varsity performer and a member of Bluffton’s record-setting 1995-96 squad that went 16-9. Klocke ranks among the top five 3-point shooters in the history of BC basketball and holds the record for 3-point shooting accuracy in a game (.667, 6-9), single season (.529, 18-34 in 1995-96) and career (.360, 45-125 from 1994-95 through 1997-98). Her six three-pointers against Manchester in 1997 tied the single-game trey mark. A native of Lakewood, Ohio (Lutheran West High School), Klocke also is the head coach for the Bluffton College women’s golf team.

Cathy Bonner Assistant Coach

Cathy Bonner begins her first season on the women’s basketball coaching staff. Bonner has coaching experience at both the high school and collegiate levels, most recently at The University of Findlay where she helped guide the 1998-99 Oiler program to a 24-7 record and a trip to the national championship game. Bonner also was the junior varsity coach at Findlay and fashioned a 9-4 record with the JV program. Prior to arriving at Findlay she spent seven years as a high school coach in New Mexico, including five seasons at Paradise Christian High School where she won one state championship and took home a runner-up trophy once as well. In her seven years as a high school coach Bonner fashioned a 145-45 record and one year was named the Division AA Coach of the Year. Also a volleyball coach, Bonner led Paradise Christian to a state runner-up finish one year. A graduate of Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo., Bonner has been a youth/recreation minister at six different churches and is active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She is currently the assistant director of Bluffton’s Marbeck Center.