Pat Little, Associated Press Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland addresses the news media at a press conference earlier this month. Click photo for larger image. RELATED STORIES How a promising hoops career turned sour Player from '82 team says she suffered the same way Harris did

UNVERSITY PARK -- She is mother hen and Mother Superior. Rene Portland, in fact, coined a self-description: Mommy Coach.

Even the former Penn State women's basketball player who filed a discrimination suit against her in federal court , commends her.

"She's one of the best coaches in women's basketball, without a doubt. Her program has been great, and it's because of her," said Jennifer Harris, 21, of Lower Paxton, Dauphin County.

Ms. Harris, who also lodged complaints with Penn State and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, alleges that Mrs. Portland discriminated against her because she thought she was a lesbian.

Ms. Harris says Ms. Portland repeatedly quizzed her and her teammates about her sexual orientation, asked her and others in meetings if she were dating women and pressured her to dress and act "more feminine.''

"It was a horrible experience," Ms. Harris said.

The controversey has made many former players reluctant to talk publicly about their coach.

"I felt -- I still think -- she's a good coach," said Cindy Davies, an Indiana, Pa., native who broke a 20-year silence after hearing about Ms. Harris' case. Ms. Davies says Mrs. Portland similarly drove her from the team in 1982 after her sophomore year.

"I looked up to her. She was a parental figure to me," said Ms. Davies, who, for a time, lived with Ms. Portland and her family. "If I did something she didn't like, I'd hear about it. If I came in too late, there would be a note. My parents loaned me a car that summer, but she wouldn't let me drive it. I had to ride a bike to campus. I hated her for that. But we were close. We shared a lot."

Family first
Such contradictions are part of the complex portrait that is Maureen "Rene" Muth Portland.

She is a woman who so treasured the value of family and family values that she made her own mother, Margaret "Granny" Muth, a part of Lady Lions basketball practices and games and team cookouts. Mrs. Portland is now a grandmother herself, but she's also new mother again, at 53, because she and husband John -- their nest hardly empty after raising their two sons and daughter and then taking in seven foster children -- adopted a daughter, Delisa, 10, a year ago March.

Mrs. Portland grew up in Broomall, outside Philadelphia, one of seven children in a staunch Catholic household. She took to took to nurturing early. In high school at Villa Maria Academy and next door at Immaculata College, she cared for teammates, counseled and supported them, and drove them all over in the family car.

Over her 26 years as Penn State's head coach, she frequently brought her children on team buses and planes. She directed players to mandatory community service and team tailgates at football games.

She is the seventh-winningest women's coach all-time and has taken her Penn State team to 21 NCAA tournaments. Is it any wonder that 21 of her "ladies," as she calls them, followed her into the coaching business?

"It's amazing to me to see how many," said Brookline native Suzie McConnell-Serio, a former player who coaches the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx.

"Even as a player, Rene was the same way," added Debbie Ryan, a foe in college, a rival coach at Virginia and a friend still. "She was always the captain, took care of other people. That's always been her role."

Now the nurturer is at a crossroads.

She was placed on notice by Penn State 12 days ago that long-festering allegations of homophobia in her women's basketball program would not be tolerated. One more instance, President Graham Spanier said in announcing the report's findings and sanctions, and she'll be terminated. She was fined $10,000, a fraction of an income believed to be well in excess of $500,000 a year.

She was ordered to undergo diversity training, similar to the workshop prescribed in 1992 after Penn State enacted a detailed policy that added sexual orientation to its discrimination and harassment rules. The new rules came, in part, as response to her words and actions.

Among them was a 1986 story in the Chicago Sun-Times thatquoted her as saying about homosexuality: "I will not have it on my team."

The penalties handed down by Penn State this month also included a letter of reprimand and a requirement that a representative of Penn State's Office of Affirmative Action take part in all of her players' exit interviews for the next three years.

The investigation found that she created a "hostile, intimidating atmosphere" toward Ms. Harris.

At an April 18 news conference, shortly before the investigation results were announced, she was unbowed.

"First and foremost, I have reached a decision of my own, a decision based on my love for the game of basketball, my loyalty to this great university and my unwavering commitment to doing the right thing as a coach, as a wife, as a mother and as a proud member of the Penn State community.

"I will return as head coach of the Lady Lions next year."

Testing tolerance
Pat Griffin presented the university-mandated workshop at Penn State in February 1992 attended by Mrs. Portland and other Nittany Lions staff members. She wrote the book on the issue, "Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sports."

And she considers Penn State's sanctions against Mrs. Portland -- among them, the second round of diversity training -- too little and way too late.

"I believe 1992 was Rene's second chance," Ms. Griffin, a former college athlete, coach and professor who conducts lectures and workshops around the country, wrote in an e-mail interview. "She knows she has been violating PSU policy since then, and did it anyway. How can that be tolerable?"

In her news conference at the Bryce Jordan Center, Mrs. Portland said the university's investigation failed to "weigh all of the relevant information ... which could have been provided."

Ms. Harris' federal suit enters mediation next week in an attempt at compromise before a scheduled May 2007 court date, but Karen Doering, the attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights advocating Ms. Harris' case, said she's not optimistic any agreement will be reached.

"Had Rene taken a very different attitude at her most recent press conference, I would have held out more hope for mediation," she said. "But it looks like we'll have to take a lot of depositions and continue on. She's in some serious denial."

Anthony R. D'Augelli, a 34-year professor of human development and a longtime faculty representative to the school's student gay groups, said he had he heard "persistent, non-specific rumors" over the past two decades about Lady Lions basketball players feeling harassed by Mrs. Portland over homosexuality. He said he repeatedly asked the students relating these tales to ask the athletes to either speak to him or make a formal complaint with the university. None did, he added.

Ken Lehrman, director of the university's Office of Affirmative Action, said Ms. Harris' complaint was the first filed with his office in the 14 years since the university adopted its wide ranging Policy Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harrassment.

A few ex-Lady Lions players and assistants said the coach allowed gay players on her team in the past.

"We had one rule: 'Once you step through this door, it's basketball,' " recalled Helen Darling, a point guard on the 2000 team that reached the Final Four and currently a player on the WNBA Charlotte Sting. " 'Don't bring your personal life to the gym, whether it was with a male or a female.' "

However, Ms. Harris and Ms. Davies, along with 1996-97 player Courtney Wicks and a former player who requested anonymity, have spoken about an ongoing pattern of bias against lesbians.

"There are things that she does that are out of her league and should be out of her hands," Ms. Davies said. "She shouldn't have the right to terminate your scholarship due to the fact that she doesn't like your lifestyle. I just want to be a part of making this stop. It has to stop."

'Driven, motherly'
Mrs. Portland, then a tough, smart, 5-foot-11 forward known as Rene Muth, played basketball at Immaculata College in an age when players wore skirts, sashes and wool tunics on the court, when the NCAA excluded the women and left them to their own American Intercollegiate Association for Women. While she was there the Mighty Macs won three AIAW championships.

After one season as an assistant coach at her alma mater, her first head-coaching job was 1976-78 at St. Joseph's in Philadelphia, where her teams collected a 47-9 record. Mrs. Portland, now married, moved to the University of Colorado, where she gathered a 40-20 record and the interest of Joe Paterno, the famed football coach who also served two years as athletic director at Penn State.

Mr. Paterno has often proclaimed that the one good thing during his short tenure as A.D. was to hire Rene Portland. She came with a list of demands: Her team would play in Rec Hall like the men, and her coaches would get nice offices there. She herself wound up with Paterno's.

This past season, with just nine scholarship players and nary a senior after Ms. Harris and two teammates were shown the door, all in the final hours of the 2004-05 season (making 10 departures in the past four seasons by one count), Mrs. Portland sustained her first losing season in more than a quarter-century as a coach, at 13-16. Nevertheless, she remained steadfast.

Virginia's Ms. Ryan explains her simply: "Extremely competitive, driven, motherly."

There was, one month ago, seemingly a question between these old coaching friends. Ms. Harris maintains that Mrs. Portland, in a University Park office visit while being recruited from Harrisburg, "said if I liked Virginia [as a potential choice], I couldn't like Penn State because at Virginia girls dated girls and at Penn State they dated guys." Ms. Ryan initially told a Boston Globe reporter she planned to pursue the matter with her old friend the Penn State coach.

This week, Ms. Ryan dismissed it out of hand: "Not important. Not of note."

"Knowing her, she'll bounce back very quickly," she added of Mrs. Portland. "You're not going to keep her down. There's just no way. Just no way."