A girls basketball coaching legend, Karen Wittrock, 71, compiled a record of 657 wins and 198 losses in 41 years as the girls basketball coach at Lutheran West High School in Rocky River. She ranks fourth in career victories on Ohio’s all-time girls coaches’ list.

Not only was she the first girls basketball coach at Lutheran West, she was the first coach in every girls sport there.

When Karen arrived at Lutheran West fresh out of Concordia Teachers College in Nebraska in 1967, Lutheran West had no girls sports teams. She must have felt like a fish out of water. In college at Concordia, she was the athlete of the year, earning letters in basketball, softball, field hockey and track. Her pioneer instincts immediately kicked in.

Karen started the entire girls sports program, starting with basketball. Nothing was easy. Her girls team was not permitted to practice in the main gym. They used the hallways to practice dribbling and passing but not shooting. They pretended to shoot layups at an imaginary basket. They bought their own uniforms, raising money through car washes and bake sales. They rented practice time at a nearby recreation center. Today the gym is named after her, referred to as the “Rock,” her college nickname.

Next she started field hockey, track and softball for girls. Soon she added volleyball and cross country. She coached them all. Later she coached the boys golf team.

She is forever identified with basketball, however. He teams won seven district tournament championships and 21 conference titles. Her teams experienced only two losing seasons. The Ohio High School Athletic Association honored her four times with its prestigious James Naismith Meritorious Service Award. She was the Ohio girls coach of the year four times and conference coach of the year 20 times.

Tonight marks her induction into her fourth hall of fame, including the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame which included her in its 2006 inaugural class.

She has twice fought off cancer but refuses to slow down. She still fills in regularly as a substitute teacher in math and phys ed at Lutheran West. She takes vacation trips in her motor home to Florida where she visits a brother and to her native Missouri to visit other family members. She enjoys those quiet moments when she drops a line in the river.

Vonda Ward grew up in a sporting family. Both her parents trained racehorses at Northfield Park. Vonda, however, enjoyed spectacular success in two totally unrelated athletic careers before she was 30.

The six-foot, six-inch native of Macedonia, Ohio, was a two-time high school All-American in basketball at Trinity High School in Garfield Heights. She led her team to the state championship in 1990. She continued her basketball career at the University of Tennessee, where she played on legendary coach Pat Summitt’s national runnerup in 1995. In the late 1990s she played pro basketball briefly in Germany and later with the Denver Xplosion of the American Basketball League.

Vonda then turned her attention to women’s professional boxing, which was at the advent of its popularity. Vonda enjoyed a meteroric rise as a heavyweight. She knocked out her first 15 opponents, setting up a showdown for the women’s IBA world heavyweight championship which she won with a hard-fought 10-round decision over Monica McGowan on Aug. 16, 2002, in Canton, Ohio.

Vonda was still unbeaten, having won 20 fights in a row, when she lost her title to the dangerous Ann Wolfe, who knocked her out in the first round in a nationally televised fight on May 8, 2004, in Biloxi, Miss. Vonda celebrated her return to the ring seven months later in Cleveland with a fourth round knockout in what turned out to be her last fight. Her record stands at 22-1, with 17 wins by knockout. There have been several attempts to match her with Leila Ali, daughter of the all-time great heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, but Ali has rejected every proposal.

Although she has not had a fight for almost eight years, Vonda remains in fighting shape. At the age of 39 she is in the gym every day in her job as a personal trainer.