Louise O’Neal is one of a group of coaching pioneers who paved the way for women’s college basketball as we know it today. From 1962-76, O’Neal served as head women’s basketball coach at Southern Connecticut State College, where she led her teams to an impressive 144-37 record and eight-straight appearances in the National Women’s Collegiate Championships.

She then served three years as the Assistant Director of Athletics and head women’s basketball coach at Yale University, where she took the Bulldogs from a previous best-finish of fifth place to an Ivy League title in three years. Her Yale teams qualified for postseason play in each of her three seasons at the helm and individual players she coached were selected for the U.S. Olympic Team that won the silver medal in Montreal in 1976, three U.S. National Teams competing at the World Games, the Pan-American Games and the World University Games. O’Neal’s final coaching role was as the coach of the U.S. National Team that won the gold medal at the 1979 International Tournament at Squaw Valley.

In 1979, O’Neal left coaching and served as Senior Associate Director of Athletics at Dartmouth College until she became Director of Athletics at Wellesley College in 1990. In 1994, the National Association for Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators (NACWAA) selected O’Neal as National Administrator of the Year and in 2004, the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) named O’Neal as the winner of its Jostens-Berenson Service Award, recognizing her lifelong commitment and service to the game of women’s basketball. O’Neal is also a member of the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and will be inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame on June 10, 2017.