FERRUM, VA (December 4, 2022) – A group of Ferrum College women’s basketball alumnae and friends recently gathered at Swartz Gym to celebrate the life and legacy of Donna Doonan who spent 29 years as head coach of Women’s Basketball Coach for the Panthers.
Doonan passed away in October 2021 after a private battle with cancer. On Saturday, December 3, her players and friends honored her with the hanging of a sign in the Swartz Gym lobby. Those in attendance continued the celebration in Franklin Hall’s Blue Ridge Mountains Room for a luncheon and sharing of stories. Following lunch, the group met back in Swartz Gym to cheer on the Ferrum women’s basketball team as they battled Old Dominion Athletic Conference rival Randolph-Macon College.
Ferrum alumna Shelby Irving said of Doonan, “You think about Ferrum and you think about Donna and you put it together: Not self, But others. I carry that everywhere I go, Donna carried that and you can tell by what we have here today.”
Doonan spent 29 seasons as Ferrum’s women’s basketball coach, served as senior woman administrator, and coached four other sports. She also taught a number of courses during her tenure within the College’s Physical Education & Recreation Division. A pioneer in women’s athletics, Doonan joined the Panther coaching staff in the fall of 1976 after earning her bachelor’s degree at Lynchburg College. She later went on to earn her master’s degree from Lynchburg.
Doonan coached six All-Americans at Ferrum, and her players earned 30 All-Conference honors, two Conference Players of the Year and two Conference Rookies of the Year. Her players earned 42 Academic All-Conference honors, and every one of her four-year letter-winners graduated from Ferrum. She was inducted into the Ferrum College Sports Hall of Fame in 2006.
In recent years, Doonan owned and operated Sunshine Teachers Insurance in Pompano Beach, Florida.
Ferrum alumna Kelly Caputo said of Doonan, “She loved what she did and cared deeply about everybody. She taught us more than basketball.”
