Brenda Vanlengen
Sports Broadcastor

Background:

Brenda VanLengen has spent her career championing the importance of education, fitness and sports. Over the past ten years, Brenda VanLengen, helped build PE4life, a national non-profit organization dedicated to developing a country of active and healthy children and youth by increasing access to quality physical education. VanLengen is responsible for the development of key PE4life programs and projects, including the nationally acclaimed PE4life Academies that serve as model school-based physical education programs. To date, PE4life program services have reached over 3,000 educational leaders from 39 states across the country, impacting 2,855 schools and over 2.2 million children. In addition, VanLengen is recognized as one of the top women’s sports broadcasters in the country. She has called NCAA Tournament games on ESPN since 1999 and announced the NCAA Division II National Championship for six years. This season, she begins her 14th season as broadcaster for Big 12 Conference Women’s Basketball on Fox Sports Net and hosts a national women’s sports talk show every Monday and Friday on SportsRadioKC.com. Recipient of the “Distinguished Alumni Award” from the University of Nebraska-Kearney in 2008, VanLengen graduated summa cum laude and earned Academic All-American honors twice in basketball at Kearney and served as an Assistant Coach for the University of Nebraska from 1990-95. In 1998, she was the Executive Director of the 1998 NCAA Women’s Final Four.

Cindy Stein
Sports Commentator

Background:

Cindy Stein is a former coach of the Missouri Tigers women’s basketball team at the University of Missouri. She was the head coach for the Tigers from 1998 to 2010. In college, she was a junior college All-American, playing her first college basketball at Illinois Central College. She later transferred to the University of Illinois, a Division I-A school, where she played in her first NCAA Division I tournament in 1982. She graduated from Illinois in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. Cindy was a graduate assistant and coach for Central Michigan University, where she earned a Master’s degree in physical education with an emphasis in athletic administration. After jobs as an assistant coach at Miami, Cincinnati and Bradley, she returned to her alma mater, first as a recruiting coach and then as an assistant coach. Her first head coaching assignment came at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas. In three years as head coach at Emporia State, she turned the women’s basketball program into a national contender. She earned various coaching awards, including being named the Division II Basketball coach of the year. During her coaching career as the head coach at Missouri she led the Tigers to two NCAA tournament berths, including a 2001 Sweet Sixteen appearance and had 29 selections to the Academic All Big 12 teams. She announced her resignation from the Missouri Tigers at the end of the 2009-10 season.