Linda Lappe started seeing basketball in a new light during her sophomore year at the University of Colorado.

After a freshman season in which she led the Buffs in scoring in 1998-99, Lappe suffered a fractured kneecap in the first game of the season, ending her year.

It was then that the phenom from Morning Sun, Iowa, began watching practices and games as she never had before. Suddenly, coaches' discussions began taking on new meaning. And her notions about someday becoming a coach herself were solidified.

"When you get injured, you're devastated," Lappe says. "But I had awesome people around me at the time who helped me look at things with a different perspective."

Ever since she graduated in 2003, Lappe has been on the coaching fast track. At the young age of 27, she was hired last week to take over a Division II Metro State program that's become a perennial contender for Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference titles.

She landed in Denver after a one-year stint at ColoradoState as an assistant for former CU player and assistant Jen Warden. Before that, she was an assistant at Drake for three seasons, learning from head coach Amy Stephens, who used to head powerful RMAC teams at Nebraska-Kearney.

"I feel like I've had the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time," says Lappe, whose Roadrunners went 24-7 last year under now-retired coach Dave Murphy on their way to a runner-up finish in the RMAC and an NCAA tournament berth. "I really enjoy Colorado, and I had a passion to be in Colorado. It's not going to be hard for me to recruit to Metro State."

While Lappe's former college coach, Ceal Barry, says increasing salaries have made landing head coaching jobs in women's basketball without several years of experience tougher and tougher, finding someone with the right coaching qualities is more difficult for schools than finding someone with experience.

"There's some people that are cut out for it and there are some people that are not, and Linda Lappe is one who's cut out to be a head coach," Barry says. "She's got that head coach personality and mentality. Linda has that judgment and ability to make decisions and maturity that some people never get.

"She'll get the years (of experience)."

Lappe is in a group of no fewer than 12 former Barry players who are now coaching at the collegiate level or are head coaches at the high school level. Warden is the head coach at CSU, and Raegan (Scott) Pebley is the head coach at Utah State. A pair of former Barry assistants, meanwhile, are also now head coaches at the Division-I level — Tanya Haave at the University of San Francisco and Beth Burns at San Diego State.

"She's been a great mentor," Lappe says of Barry. "Even when I was still a player, she mentioned numerous times that she thought I should get into coaching. Since I've been coaching, she's been a person that I can call and ask for advice. Every time I talk to her she says something that really sticks with me."

Lappe's top orders of business at Metro State so far have been touching base with all of the players, meeting various people in the program, hiring assistant coaches and moving to Denver.

Luckily for her, having four of five starters back off of last year's team should help ease the transition. At least two of those players were fans of Lappe's long before they became pupils.

Anne-Marie Torp and Danielle Ellerington, who both started every game for the Roadrunners last season, played at Monarch High School, just a few miles down the Boulder Turnpike from the Coors Events Center where Lappe was playing. Lappe's roommate at the time, Mandy Nightingale, sometimes helped out at Monarch practices, which got the Coyotes interested in Lappe's exploits for the Buffs.

"One thing I remember was she was a really scrappy player," says Torp, who played for Pebley at Utah State before transferring to Metro State before last season. "She wore knee pads because she was always on the ground. One night when I heard she got hired I said, 'Oh great, we're all going to have to wear knee pads.'

"I'm excited."

Although she doesn't rule out trying to coach at the Division I level someday — maybe as the coach at CU? — Lappe says all of her goals right now are geared toward Metro State.

The downtown Denver school has established winning traditions in several of its sports in recent years, and Lappe is excited to have the chance to add to the success.

"It's a great place," Lappe says. "It has great tradition, and I don't foresee myself moving on anytime soon. I think it's a place you can have a great career."