Meaningful milestones for DePaul's Lenti, Bruno

A night out at a Las Vegas show is how Eugene Lenti celebrated.

Doug Bruno took it all in at a postgame surprise party that included dozens of friends, co-workers, players and fans.

These are good times at DePaul.

It's not often two of the most prominent coaches on campus reach significant career milestones within days of each other. But that's the story at DePaul this month.

Last week at the National Fastpitch Coaches Association annual convention in Las Vegas, Lenti, DePaul's softball coach, learned he'll be one of six people inducted into the association's Hall of Fame in 2008.

"We went out that night to Cirque de Soleil," Lenti said. "It was a great night. I knew that I had been nominated for the Hall of Fame, but I didn't know if I would get in because I was going up against a lot of great coaches. Getting in is really great and it kind of validates your credibility a little more. It's like, 'Maybe this guy really does know what he's doing.' "

Same could be said for Bruno, the women's basketball coach.

A few days before Lenti's big news broke, Bruno directed his nationally ranked team to an 80-48 victory over Missouri State. It was the 400th victory of his career.

"I feel as alive and as excited as a coach as I ever have," said Bruno, who became the 40th active NCAA coach with 400 victories. "Something like this invigorates you.

"We're really happy for Eugene, too. This school has some great coaches to work next to."

Both Bruno and Lenti, who have coached at DePaul for 22 and 26 years respectively, remember a time when coaching women's sports wasn't all that great, when it was truly a labor of love.

Reaching their respective milestones has brought many of those memories to the surface.

"When I was first doing this, I never even thought about things like the Hall of Fame, or that we'd be winning conference championships and going to the World Series," Lenti said.

"We didn't start with much. I think about how the girls in those first years would use one bat. They'd drop it down after their at-bat, and then the next girl would come up and use the same bat, and the next girl after that. We had to share gloves and everything else, too.

"Now, they have all their own stuff."

And Lenti has a full-time job.

"When I first started here (in 1980), the softball job wasn't even a full-time job," said Lenti, who has 932 wins and is the 16th winningest softball coach in NCAA history. "For my first 12 to 13 years at DePaul, I was considered part time, so I also taught high school English. I did that for about eight years."

Lenti then got hired at DePaul full time, but the softball part of his job was still part time for the next four years. In the meantime, he helped out with intramurals and the women's basketball team.

By then, Bruno was already on his second tour of duty with the Blue Demons. He took the women's basketball job in 1976 and coached for two seasons before jumping over to coach the Chicago Hustle, a wildly popular professional women's basketball team.

Two years later, he became the associate men's head coach at Loyola. He stayed in that position for eight years before returning to the women's team at DePaul for good in 1988.

"I remember a lot from that first team I had in the 1970s," Bruno said. "We had girls who were playing four sports at DePaul. The girls had to travel to road games in their own cars. And once, we had a car break down. I eventually bought the biggest van I could afford, a cargo van, and we piled all the girls in the back for our trips. They were sitting back there on gymnastics mats. Now, we either fly or take really nice charter buses.

"It's nice to get 400 wins, but to me, it's really just a number that is a symbol of those first women who took a chance on this program at the very beginning and all 160 women who have poured their blood and guts into developing and growing this program into what it is today."

As far as tomorrows, neither Lenti nor Bruno is thinking about that. Milestones or not, both say they have a lot of coaching left in them.

"I really do feel like there is so much more I'd like to accomplish," the 50-year-old Lenti said, beginning to chuckle. "Plus, it does pay the bills. My youngest daughter is only in sixth grade, so that's another 10 years right there before she gets out of DePaul."

The 57-year-old Bruno has six sons and two grandchildren, but he's not ready to do what most grandparents eventually do.

"Once you start counting the days to retirement, then you're already done," Bruno said. "And I'm not ready to be done yet. What being in this game for so long has taught me is that I'm excited about knowing more with each year, and about being able to better help my players be the best they can be.

"I'm more fired up than ever."