Coach Nancy Funk reaches 500-win plateau

She's not your average grandmother. And with a name like Funk, one wouldn't expect her to be anyway. What's the secret to her youth? According to her, it's coaching the women's basketball team. "I love Hopkins. I think it's a fantastic place. The students are dynamic, bright. They keep me young."

Funk's been staying young for over 20 years. In her 21st season coaching the Blue Jays, she tallied her 500th win on Saturday, a milestone reached by only eight other coaches in Division III history. "It's a really big accomplishment. It's one of those things you know you didn't do on your own. I've been blessed to have great players and people around."

Even though No. 500 against Ursinus was important for Funk, she hasn't been as pleased about the season as a whole. After the Jays' loss to Gettsyburg on Tuesday, she had difficulty enjoying her record success during such hard times. "It's a shame that an accomplishment like that is shadowed by a difficult season. We've been so up and down. We had higher hopes for finishing stronger."

However, these ups and down haven't taken away from Funk's love of the game. She combined coaching knowledge with grandmotherly wisdom as she unveiled life's lessons behind the game. "Sports are a microcosm of life. You experience so much in sports that you experience in life. Just the drive to succeed really carries over into the real world."

The other thing that's kept Funk fresh for so long, she says, is a strong coaching staff. "We all inspire each other to be more," she said. A few minutes later, she paused mid-sentence to add, "I can't stress that enough. My colleagues are my inspiration."

Those colleagues have done quite a lot of inspiring. Funk has been inspired to win the most single-season games in Hopkins women's basketball history, coach two Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award winners, a Verizon First-Team Academic All-American, an NCAA Division III National Champion, and an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship recipient -- just to name a few. The inspiration stuck through her six consecutive trips to the NCAA tournament and three Centennial Conference Championships (1996, 1999, 2000). Back-to-back Elite Eight appearances (1997, 1998)? It's obvious that Funk is responsible for at least some of the glory.

But according to her, next to her grandchildren, it's her players that bring her the most joy, "When my players do well, that's the highlight. That's really it. You can't put value on that."

Some things that she will put value on, though, are Chinese food, Christian rock and the color yellow, stating "I tend to savor that color." Don't ask her about Dave Matthews or the color blue -- she says she's grown tired of both.

But somehow she hasn't grown tired of the game. Funk's been playing since she was in middle school and continued through four years at Messiah College, a small Christian school in Pennsylvania. When asked if she was any good on the court, she pauses before answering.

"I was tall."

Only a year after graduating, she left the nursing field to coach a team of 25 middle schoolers. Only a year after piloting the middle-school plane, she left the small Pennsylvania school to coach at the college level, eventually leading her and her husband Dave, a baseball coach at St. Paul's School, to Baltimore.

The coaching experience, she said, has taught her quite a few things. "The greatest lesson I've learned as a coach, I think more than anything, is patience. Because things don't always turn out the way you've planned them to. Patience and perseverance -- those two go hand in hand. When things don't go well and you don't strive to make them better, you won't succeed."

This grandma obviously has plenty of both. However, after 500 successful games, it seems that a different number is on her mind.

"I have two grandchildren -- and one on the way!"

Along with her next grandchild, Funk is looking forward to the team's next game against Franklin & Marshall on Saturday. With such a bright future, it looks like this grandma will stay funky for a long time.