Sherri Coale Joins a Select Group of Women’s College Basketball Greatness
By Chip Rouse
Over the past 20 years, Oklahoma women’s basketball has been one of the top college programs in the nation. But it hasn’t always been that way. Head coach Sherri Coale has been the difference maker.
The two decades before Coale was hired to head the women’s basketball program at Oklahoma were almost a reverse image of the way things are now.
In fact, in 1990, 16 seasons after women’s basketball was officially recognized as a varsity sport at OU, university officials announced that the sport was being dropped because of poor performance and low attendance.
At the time the decision was made to discontinue varsity women’s basketball at Oklahoma, the average attendance at a women’s game was reported to be well under 100. There was such a public outcry following the announcement that the decision was reversed just a week later and the rest, as they say, is history.
Sherri Coale was the head coach at Norman High School when she was hired to lead the Sooner women’s program in 1996. At the time, there was some concern whether she was the right choice to turn things around in a program that had been faltering and barely treading water for years. Those concerns were reinforced when the Sooners finished 5-22 in Coale’s first season in 1996-97.
Three seasons later, however, Coale’s Sooner team surprised everyone, posting a 25-8 record and making what would become the first of 17 consecutive appearances in the NCAA Women’s Tournament. As it turned out, Coale was the ideal person not only to lead Oklahoma women’s basketball back to respectability but to a level of sustained success that is now widely recognized as one of the elite women’s basketball programs in the nation.
On Saturday night in Knoxville, Tenn., Coale was one of six individuals, all of whom have made significant contributions to the game of women’s basketball, who were inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Nine years earlier, the Oklahoma head coach was inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame.
“I can’t imagine not doing this because this is what I love to do, even when I have time off.” —Sherri Coale, OU women’s basketball coach
In 20 seasons at Oklahoma, Coale has amassed 442 wins as head coach and a .671 winning percentage. Her teams have exceeded 20 wins 14 times and three time that win total exceeded 30 wins in a season.
She has won 10 Big 12 championships (six in the regular season and four postseason tournament titles) and four times has been named Big 12 Coach of the Year.
The Sooners’ 17 consecutive NCAA Women’s Tournament appearances is the fifth longest active streak in the nation. Included in that streak are three Final Four appearances.
Sherri Coale has definitely done her part to put Oklahoma women’s basketball on the map, bringing a program that was virtually dead in the water some 25 years ago all the way back to national prominence. And she didn’t have to go to far from home to accomplish it.
She is a native of the Sooner State, born and bred in Healdton, Oklahoma, in the southern part of the state near Ardmore. Coale attended Oklahoma Christian College, where she played guard on the women’s basketball team. She had been the at Norman High for six years when she was hired to take the job at Oklahoma.
“I can’t imagine not doing this because this is what I love to do, even when I have time off,” Coale told Norman Transcript sports editor Clay Horning about her passion for the game of basketball several days before being officially inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.