Cicero native Beth Bonin has had a decorated basketball career throughout our region.

As a player, Bonin won three sectional titles with Cicero-North Syracuse and was recognized across the state during her collegiate career. Now, she’s back in Section 3 as the first woman in its history to lead a boys' varsity basketball team. 

“When I grew up, I didn’t really get to see a lot of women in men’s sports," Bonin said. "It was always a male coach in a male sport.”

She went from Cicero-North Syracuse to Queens College and back upstate at Cortland, and her name stands out. 

“I really cared more about winning and losing more so than my individual success, but obviously my individual success could speak for itself," Bonin said.

It’s a long list of accomplishments: Three sectional championships at C-N-S; first team All-East Coast Conference honors for Queens College; and SUNYAC Player of the Year recognition in her only season at Cortland.

Her favorite player is Steph Curry, so maybe it’s not surprising she laced more 3-pointers in a season than anyone in Red Dragon history. 

“I guess maybe that might be what I’m most proud of if I’m talking individually, because that’s kind of what I catered my game to for my entire life, was being a really good shooter," said Bonin. "For right now, my name is etched there.” 

With her legacy as a player established, she turned to coaching. 

“I just couldn’t see myself leaving basketball," she said. "That’s all I really knew, all I did; that’s what a lot of my days revolved around when I was growing up.” 

Just four years into her coaching career, she was named Central Square’s boys varsity head coach, making history as the first woman in Section 3 to lead a boys varsity basketball program. 

“I think it means a lot more to other people," she said. "I’ve kinda always looked at it as I’m just another coach.”

Her task is turning around a Redhawks team that went 1-19 in 2023.

“Just becoming a program that wants to play for everybody," Bonin said. "So you want to play for the guy next to you, want play for me, want to play for my assistants, want to play for the school, the fans, the community. That’s the biggest thing."

So while she views herself as just another coach trying to win games, she’s inspiring little girls around her.

“There are some girls that, they’re at the age when I first started to love basketball so they’re kind of always in my ear about basketball or asking me what my schedule is and kind of just wanting to come to the games," said Bonin.

As more women break barriers throughout men’s sports, Bonin is another marker of representation.

“That means probably the most because, I think, I had always wanted to have somebody like that," she said. "They’re kind of getting instilled in them at a young age that if they want to do this when they move on, then they’re able to. You don’t really need to be anybody; there’s no specific person that can coach somebody. It can kind of be anybody.”