NORMAN, Okla. (June 10, 2016) – Before the Final Fours and the Big 12 Conference titles and the coach-of-the-year honors, before she became an icon, Sherri Coale was just a small-town girl from southern Oklahoma looking for an opportunity to show what she could do.

Oklahoma Christian gave her that chance, and both the university and her chosen sport are better off for it. Coale, who will be inducted Saturday into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tenn., has carried the OC banner far and wide as she's built the University of Oklahoma into one of the sport's giants during her two decades in Norman.

To this day, she insists she wouldn't be where she's at now without OC providing her with a solid foundation – not just in basketball, but in life.

"I loved playing basketball and I got an opportunity to go to Oklahoma Christian, where I really learned the game," said Coale, a 2002 inductee into the OC Athletic Hall of Fame. "I got a fantastic liberal arts education, but I really learned the game of basketball while I was doing that. There's no way that I'm able to become a young head coach at Norman High School, much less take over the reins here 20 years ago and do this, without the preparation I got there."

That she ended up at OC is a story in itself. She had some cousins who were members of OC's booster club and told then-coach Max Dobson about a hotshot guard named Sherri Buben at tiny Healdton High School, where she put up huge scoring numbers while playing the 6-on-6 version of the sport. Dobson said he was skeptical, because "you hear a lot of those stories. Everyone's got a good player."

Still, he offered her a scholarship "basically without seeing her play." He watched her at the 1983 All-State game and realized he'd made a wise choice.

"Things just fell into place," he said. "It was kind of like God meant for her to be here."

Coale arrived at OC confident in her abilities, so much so that her teammates made her a slightly risqué headband, labeled with an acronym that, shall we say, wouldn't pass muster at OC if the powers that be had known what it stood for. Her willingness to work hard and continually learn the game made her popular with her teammates.

"Coming from a small school, Sherri and I shared a special bond," said Melinda (Savage) Simpson, who was from Stratford, another tiny southern Oklahoma town. "She was absolutely one-of-a-kind, very driven, a hard worker, always spending extra hours in the gym getting better. I would say she was a perfectionist in every sense of the word."

Current OC coach Stephanie Findley was an assistant under Dobson during Coale's first two seasons before ascending to the top job for Coale's final two years. She noticed the same qualities as did Simpson, the same qualities that later would serve Coale well as a coach.

"I saw intelligence, passion, competitiveness, energy, focus and drive," Findley said. "She was and is very meticulous. She was a natural leader, a perfectionist and a sponge for knowledge. She not only played the game but studied it and researched it. She showed the same love of the game then as she does now in her coaching.

"She's not easily distracted. She sets a path for herself and stays on it. That focus and discipline was very evident in her playing days, as she would take a lot of verbal abuse and harassment from opposing male fans, but was able to tune it out and focus on the game."

Coale quickly became a key cog for OC, a leader on the floor who affected the game more with quality decision-making than with scoring. Not coincidentally, some of the program's best seasons came during Coale's playing career, during which the Lady Eagles won three Sooner Athletic Conference titles and their only NAIA District 9 championship.

That title game, a 92-68 romp over nationally ranked Cameron in Lawton in 1986, featured one of college basketball's all-time best shooting performances, as the Lady Eagles set a still-standing NAIA mark by making 79.6 percent of their field-goal attempts. OC went on to advance to the NAIA quarterfinals for the first time in the program's history.

"That was a night," Coale said. "You get older and all your games kind of blur together, especially me as a player. I remember ones I coached more vividly than ones that I played. But I will never forget that night at Cameron. That was perhaps the most fun I've ever had on a basketball floor."

Coale said she took important lessons from both Dobson and Findley into her own coaching career.

"What I learned most from coach Dobson was a kindness that I can only hope to model in some way, shape or form," she said. "He is easily the kindest man I've ever met and by that, that does not mean he was a pushover as a basketball coach. We ran more for him than I have ever since that time. But he had a genuine sincerity for people and for their souls. That is extraordinary."

From Findley, "I learned that basketball can and should be fun. We laughed a lot in practice. She could get mad as could be – and you did not want to make her mad, because it was scary – but we laughed a lot. We had a good time. I think the way that she used humor in timeouts and critical situations, at halftime, in just the right degree, is something I took away and have tried to do with my teams as well."

A third OC basketball coach also had a profound impact on Coale – Dan Hays, who arrived at OC in 1983, the same year as she did. She often would practice with the Lady Eagles, then stay and watch Hays conduct drills for the Eagles. She'd sit in his office and ask questions, trying to pick his brain as he worked to rebuild a proud men's program that fell upon hard times in the wake of NAIA sanctions.

Those first-hand observations proved handy when Coale had a similar responsibility at OU, to take a program that had literally been thrown on the scrap heap by the university a few years earlier and make it competitive.

"From coach Hays, I learned how to teach," Coale said. "He is hands-down the best teacher of the game of basketball that I have ever met and I was just, by the grace of God, thrown into the same place at the same time with him and I got to watch him build a program from the ground floor up. There is no experience that could compare to that opportunity."

Prepared by her time at OC, Coale quickly made a mark on her chosen profession. By age 24, she was the head coach at Norman High School, which competed in the state's highest class. Seven years and two Class 6A titles later, she was a surprise choice as the new head coach of an OU program so far down that in 1990, the university briefly dropped it before reinstating it after an outcry.

OU struggled in Coale's first season, going 5-22 in 1996-97 and losing its last 16 games. The Sooners went 8-19 the next season. By season three, 1998-99, OU posted a winning record of 15-14 and made the Women's National Invitation Tournament field. One season later, the Sooners won the Big 12 Conference championship and reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

They've been to the Big Dance every year since, a run that now stands at 17 years, the sixth-longest current streak in NCAA Division I. In 2002, Coale guided the Sooners to the national championship game, losing to Connecticut in San Antonio. They went back to the Final Four in 2009 and 2010.

In 20 years at Oklahoma, Coale has posted a 442-217 record and won 10 Big 12 titles – six in the regular season, four in the postseason tournament. The four-time Big 12 coach of the year has coached four first-team All-Americans, six Big 12 players of the year and 14 WNBA draft selections. 

Through all the success, she's remained a proud Eagle, always willing to help her alma mater because of her appreciation for how it helped shape her life.

"When you go away from home and go to college, that's when you formulate your own set of values and principles and decide how you want to live your life," she said. "I was fortunate to be surrounded by great people who made great impressions on me.

"I got to play for Max and watch Dan build a program. You can't put a price tag on that. I was taught by some fantastic English teachers, who really created the type of teacher I would become. I could just go on and on with people, people, people. That's the best thing about it."