The Southern Indiana Athletics program has seen many great coaches in its history. If there were a Mount Rushmore of USI’s greatest head coaches, the list would certainly include Women’s Basketball Head Coaches Chancellor Dugan (1991-99), Rick Stein, (1999-current) and Cross-Country Head Coach Mike Hillyard. (1996-current) For the fourth slot, a coach that is a lock for this list and has a resumé to potentially be atop the USI Athletics mountain is without question Sue Kunkle, USI softball head coach.
Kunkle, softball head coach since 2001, is a coach who strives to win at all costs, as shown by her 677 coaching wins (as of March 7, 2025), which is atop the USI Athletics record book. In addition, she has an NCAA Division II title (2018), three Great Lakes Valley Conference championships, two of which are in tournaments (2018 and 2022), and three GLVC Coach of the Year awards (2006, 2017, 2022). The last stat is a fascinating one, as it shows a large span of excellence over three decades, something that few coaches can attain.
Kunkle credited the staff around her and the university at large as a major factor in her success at USI.
“I truthfully think that I surround myself with great people every day,” she said. “Our administration takes really good care of us, and it’s just been a really great ride so far.”
However, her team’s successes aren’t limited to on-the-field ones. On Aug. 13, softball players from USI were acknowledged for their brilliance in the classrooms by the National Fastpitch Coaches’ Association, with the softball team’s accumulative GPA during the 2023-2024 academic year standing at 3.57.
Sue described the satisfaction of helping her players achieve their goals on and off the field as “A different feeling than when you were a player and you had something, a huge moment. You work with kids, build this relationship and then see them succeed. It’s just such a great feeling for a coach.”
Kunkle also praised her team “I do think a lot of it has to do with the kids that we bring here, I mean, we always have such amazing young ladies in our program.”
With March being Women’s History Month, Sue reflects on her path to athletics and how she found her passion for competition. Like many coaches, she played her sport of choice growing up, softball and eventually earned an athletic scholarship at California University of Pennsylvania, where she started all four years as a pitcher. She was a dominant pitcher, with a record of 54-12 over her four-year career, from 1990-1994. She enjoyed her college experience to the point where she changed her major to focus on a career in coaching and then she graduated. She said,
“I got my first coaching job, and after that, I knew that was what I wanted to do,” she said.
Kunkle was candid about how the opportunities for women in athletics have gotten remarkably better. Sue believes that “the opportunities for women have gotten so much better in the last even five years, but moving forward, I think that that month just kind of represents how far we’ve come and the opportunities that are there for women.”
She also believes that as a community “we need to recognize that there are so many great female athletes that have come out of here, that have gone on to do wonderful things in life.”
To close, Sue ended with a piece of advice to USI students and perhaps the community as a whole.
“Relish every single moment, because you will blink and it’ll be gone,” she said. “Enjoy every moment, you know, it’s all about the experience.”
(All statistics and information courtesy of USI Athletics)