Title IX: West Chester alums are all over the women’s college coaching world

The list of coaches and administrators who left West Chester and achieved all sorts of feats is fairly staggering. Here’s a partial list:

Eve Atkinson. A 12-time all-American swimmer at West Chester in addition to playing on the lacrosse and field hockey teams, Atkinson went on to be the first female athletic director at an NCAA Division I-AA football-playing institution, Lafayette.

Geno Auriemma. Not a basketball player while graduating from West Chester, Auriemma began coaching as an assistant at Bishop McDevitt High in Wyncote while still an undergraduate. He has gone on to coach the Connecticut women to a record 11 NCAA titles.

Betty Costanza. A 1969 graduate of West Chester State, Costanza was nationally ranked in the pentathlon and competed in the Millrose Games, the AAU National Pentathlon Championships, and the 1964 Olympic trials. She started the Penn’s women’s track-and-field team from scratch in 1976 and coached there until 2002.

Vonnie Gros. An All-American in field hockey and lacrosse at Ursinus, she helped lead her West Chester field hockey teams to the first two national championships (AIAW). Her West Chester lacrosse teams never lost. Gros moved on to become the coach for USA field hockey, directing the team to an Olympic bronze medal in 1984. She is a member of the United States Field Hockey Hall of Fame and the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Linda Hill-MacDonald. A player on the 1969 national title team in women’s basketball, Hill-MacDonald went on to coach Temple from 1980 to1990 and Minnesota from 1990 to 1997, and was the first coach of the WNBA’s Cleveland Rockers, 1997-99.

Kathy Krannebitter. A 1982 graduate of West Chester, Krannebitter was a starter on the 1978 national championship field hockey team and played for the 1982 lacrosse team that finished seventh in the AIAW national tournament. As a coach, her West Chester field hockey teams won national titles in 1986 and ‘87.

Kathy McNally. She was on the diving, field hockey, and lacrosse teams at West Chester, then coached six sports at the high school level before being hired by La Salle to start a field hockey program there in 1976. She coached the Explorers to fifth place nationally in 1979 before giving up coaching to concentrate on her duties as a top athletic department administrator. She hired her successor, and in 1980 the Explorers won the AIAW title.

Cathy Rush. At West Chester, Rush competed for the basketball, lacrosse, and gymnastics teams. She went on to coaching fame in charge of the Immaculata Mighty Macs, winning the first three AIAW national titles, beating her alma mater to win the first one, in 1972.

Karen Shelton. A 1979 West Chester graduate, Shelton won three national championships playing field hockey and one playing lacrosse. She also started on the 1984 USA Olympic team that won a bronze medal. In 41 seasons coaching field hockey at North Carolina, Shelton has won nine NCAA championships and 24 Atlantic Coast Conference titles.

Tina Sloan-Green. Sloan-Green played field hockey, basketball, and volleyball at West Chester, and later became the first Black player on the USA women’s national field hockey team. Green then became the first Black head lacrosse coach in the history of women’s intercollegiate lacrosse. As Temple’s head coach, she had a 207-62-4 record with a .758 career winning percentage. Sloan-Green’s Temple teams won three NCAA titles and reached the Final Four 11 straight times.

Cindy Timchal. At West Chester, Timchal competed in lacrosse, tennis, and track. Navy’s first women’s lacrosse coach, named in 2006, Timchal has been in charge in Annapolis ever since, after previously being the head coach at Northwestern and Maryland. Navy has gone to seven NCAA tournaments, two Elite Eights, and the 2017 Final Four.

Marian Washington. A star of the 1969 West Chester team that won the first national collegiate basketball women’s title, Washington went on to coach Kansas from 1973 to 2004. Her Jayhawks reached the national tournament (AIAW or NCAA) 14 times. Washington was the first Black coach on the USA Olympic women’s basketball team when she was an assistant on the 1996 gold medal-winning team.

Diane Wright. A multisport star at West Chester, Wright coached Connecticut’s field hockey program from 1975 to 1989 and led UConn to NCAA championships in 1981 and 1985.