As the men’s Oklahoma basketball team was busily preparing for March Madness, even bigger news was coming out of the other side of the Lloyd Noble Center.
Sherri Coale, the longtime head coach of the Sooner women’s program, announced on Wednesday that she was retiring after 25 seasons leading the Lady Sooners.
When Coale took over the head-coaching duties at an Oklahoma program that was close to relegation in the mid-1990s, little did she know that she was looking at a stay that would span 25 seasons.
In her first season at OU. in1996-97, which also coincided with the inaugural season of the Big 12 Conference, Coales’ Sooner team got off to a rocky beginning, going 5-22 overall and recording just one conference win in 16 games. Within four seasons, however, Coale led the Oklahoma women to their third-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
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That was followed by 19 consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament for the Crimson and Cream.
Coales’ record at Oklahoma includes 513 wins, making her the winningest coach, and by a long shot, in Oklahoma women’s basketball history. Of her 19 NCAA Tournament teams, nine advanced to the Sweet 16 or beyond, with three making it to the Final Four. Her 2001-02 Sooner team was runner-up to national champion Connecticut.
Over her 25-year career at OU, Coale coached four First-Team All-Americans, and six times one of her players were named Big 12 Player of the Year. She herself was a four-time Big 12 Coach of the Year.
Fourteen different Sooners were drafted into the WNBA during the Coale coaching era and six were first-round selections.
A lifelong Oklahoman, Coale had never coached above the high school level when she was hired to coach women’s basketball at OU. She parlayed a playing career at Oklahoma Christian University into the coaching high school basketball in the Oklahoma City area.
She started out as an assistant coach for two years at Edmond Memorial High School before becoming head coach at Norman High School, where she remained for six seasons, winning two 6A state championships before OU came calling.
In 1990 OU announced plans to discontinue the women’s basketball program after years of disappointing performance and declining attendance. Despite not having any college coaching experience, Coale helped turn both of these situations around, and in dramatic fashion.
In a statement put out by the OU athletic department, Coale called the opportunity to become head coach of the women’s basketball program at Oklahoma the “privilege of my lifetime.
“(When) I accepted this, my dream job, I was pretty sure I had died and gone to heaven,” she said. “Though the task would not be for the faint of heart, I just wanted to build a program that this great state and this great institution could be proud of. Twenty-five years later, I still cannot believe the ride Oklahoma women’s basketball has taken me on.”
Coale is sincerely grateful for the opportunity to coach at Oklahoma, but it can also be said that Sooner fans are equally grateful for what she has meant for OU women’s basketball and the strong legacy of success she leaves behind.
A motto that Coale lives by and that she impressed upon her Sooner players is,:
“Leave your story better than you found it.”
No question she has done that with Oklahoma women’s basketball. Well done, Coach Coale.