This is not a basketball story.  It's a story about a woman who went from making $30,000 a year to pulling down $800,000 a year in ten years and how she did it! 

If you are a male chauvinist who believes in the "dumb blonde" stereotype, you just might want to skip this story.

 
The music has been blaring for some twenty minutes  when suddenly the room goes black and the music stops.  On the huge screen with four cameras pointing every direction,  the image of a Cadillac Escalade appears.
A pair of long shapely legs with the feet ensconced in her signature Stella McCartney stilleto heels swing out as the door opens.  Her blond tresses swirl and cascade about her youthful face in the Oklahoma wind as one of the giants of women's college coaches, immaculately dressed,  moves toward the entrance to Lloyd Noble arena. 
To the fans waiting inside, she needs no introduction as the lights come back up and Oklahoma women's basketball coach, Sherri Coale, walks into the arena to thunderous applause.
The public address announcer screams, "It's showtime"! and another OU women's basketball game begins.
To say that Coach Coale has a flair for the dramatic would be an understatement; however, this blonde is no dummy! She is a summa cum laude(with highest honor)
graduate of Oklahoma Christian University where she also played a mean game of basketball.   Everything she does is calculated to motivate, entertain, and educate. She strives to develop her recruits academically, socially, and athletically. One of her proudest moments was when Stacey Dales was named simultaneously to the Scholastic and Athletic All-American teams. 
Coale didn't always drive a Cadillac though.  Back in 1996, when the assistant OU athletic director was looking for a coach who could elevate the women's program out of the doldrums,  she was smart enough not to forget her own backyard.
Coale, basketball coach and Englsh teacher at Norman High School, had just directed the Norman High School girls to back-to-back state championships.
Oklahoma took a chance, hiring a highschool coach to run a college program; and, as an article in the New York Times last year mentioned, " Here in the oil patch, it hit a gusher in terms of success and popularity."
When Coale went for her second interview and OU offered the job, she accepted without even asking her salary.
When the AD asked if she didn't want to know what she would be making, she sheepishly admitted she did.
"How does 80 sound?"
"Thousand????" Coale asked.
Coale went home, walked in and informed her husband,  "We're making $80 thousand!"
"We thought we had just won the lottery," she added.
At the time she was making $30 thousand and she and her teacher husband combined did not make $80 thousand.  Coale immediately set about learning from the best. 
One of her first visits was to see men's coach, Roy Williams, then at Kansas, to discuss hiring a staff, recruiting and techniques of the fastbreak and the motion offense.
Coale followed Williams around to a series of basketball camps one day, getting in and out of the car what seemed like 50 times, talking as they rode, filling a legal pad with notes.
“We went to Wendy’s and had a cheeseburger,” Coale said. “In the drive-thru, I picked his brain.”
Later, she watched the Chicago Bulls practice to see how Phil Jackson ran the triangle offense. Then she set out to build her own dynasty, except that she did not have Michael Jordan.
Her first two teams at Oklahoma finished 5-22 and 8-19. But by 2002, Coale’s sixth season, the Sooners reached the national championship game, losing to UConn.
“Confidence pours out of her,” said Stacey Dales, one of Coale’s early recruits. “Roy Williams did it with stars. Coach Coale took no stars and built a team.”
Eventually, the stars arrived
Along the way, her teams have picked up a ton of Big 12 titles ,Big 12 title tournament wins as well as trips to the Sweet Sixteen and the Elite Eight. Since 1998, her teams have been to the NCAA tournament every year.   At the moment, she has more Big 12 titls wins than any other coach in the conference.  In fact, since her third year her teams have never had a losing season. 
Don't be surprised to see her salary jump to over a million a year after this year's unbelievable coaching job on her team's road to the Final Four.  It will be Coale's third trip to the Final Four in less than ten years and her second in as many years. 
 Rumor was that Coale reportedly was offered the Texas job three seasons ago at a salary of $1 million, a job that eventually went to the Duke coach, Gail Koestenfors  That would have put her on a par with  Kim Mulkey of Baylor as well as with Gino Auriemmo of UConn and Pat Summitt of Tennessee.
Coale elected to stay at OU, however, when the powers that be offered her a $250,000 raise from her salary then of $550,000  to $800,000 with a guaranted $20,000 raise each year until 2011 when her salary will take another $70,000 jump.
Coale leaving OU, realistically, was probably always slim and none.  Asked once if she could coach anywhere else, she  replied,
" I could; but I don't think I could ever feel comfortable anywhere else."
Coale is like my girls.  She grew up vested in OU. 
"On Saturday, if the game wasn't on  TV, every radio in our house was tuned to it," she stated.
"When the fight song played, we stood and sang along with it."
Coale has mentioned often that in her first season as coach, their attendance averaged 65 fans...and those were primarily friends and family.  Today, attendance regularly averages 10,000 a game, among the best in women's basketball.
Give the gal her due:  She may be theatrical, but she puts her money where her mouth is!

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/sports/ncaabasketball/01oklahoma.html