 "Photo: Ashley Inguanta")
The UCF Athletics landscape is littered with new coaches trying to build up programs and longtime coaches attempting to maintain their stature.
But only one has been here since the beginning of his or her program.
The UCF Softball team has had one head coach since its inception in 2000: Renee Luers-Gillispie.
Luers-Gillispie was born in Livermore, Calif., but grew up in Iowa. She attended Danville High School, where she played softball and basketball.
The path to playing softball in college and then coaching the game would not have been possible, if it were not for some assistance from her high school basketball and softball coach, Rick Dillinger.
Luers-Gillispie, the fifth of sixth children, was the first from her family to attend college.
“My two older brothers and two older sisters didn’t go on into school. For me, it really was not much of an option,” Luers-Gillispie said. “It was my high school coach, Rick Dillinger, that actually put in some calls for me, and got me a scholarship at Kirkwood Community College to play basketball and softball.”
Dillinger was able to provide numerous opportunities for Luers-Gillispie, helping pave her future.
“He is the key to everything I am right now for really opening up some doors that I didn’t even know where possible.”
Luers-Gillispie attended Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for two seasons while earning her associate’s of arts degree. In 1981, she was the ninth-ranked pitcher nationally in the NJCAA.
In two years at Kirkwood, her team experienced great success.
“Our softball program went to two national tournaments my freshman and sophomore year, and that is when I was seen and able to get a softball scholarship at West Texas State,” she said.
At West Texas State in Canyon, Texas, (now known as West Texas A&M) she set nine career pitching records, including most wins, most strikeouts and most saves.
She would go on to be inducted into the West Texas A&M Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005.
Luers-Gillispie’s first head coaching position came at Joliet Junior College in Illinois.
She was there for two seasons in 1991 and 1992 before moving to Bradley University.
At Bradley, she spent three years as head coach from 1993-95 before taking the head coaching position at Texas Tech.
When she arrived in Lubbock, Luers-Gillispie had the role of rebuiling the program.
This is part six of series profiling UCF head coaches.
She stayed at Texas Tech from 1996-99.
“In 1995, they basically reinstated the program because they dropped it in 1985,” she said.
After spending four seasons at Texas Tech, Luers-Gillispie came to where she has spent the past eight seasons.
Luers-Gillispie chose UCF because she said the school was committed to building a program.
“It was a great opportunity,” Luers-Gillispie said. “Steve Sloan, the athletic director at the time, said we’re going to have a field up for your first season and give you a year to recruit.”
“That in itself was worth the change. And having somebody committed to the program and be a part of a program like this,” she said. “That is how I ended up at UCF.”
Luers-Gillispie, who earned her degree in recreation administration from West Texas State, said she knew education might not be for her after her experience with a rather large physical education class.
“I went to do my student teaching,” she said. “I was studying biology and physical education, and was put into a physical education class that had 95 kids in one class with one gymnasium. When I got into [the gym], I thought to myself ‘this isn’t what I signed up for.’ ”
During her time at UCF, Luers-Gillispie has led the Knights to an Atlantic Sun
Championship in 2005 and, in 2008, a Conference USA Championship.
UCF has been the perfect fit for her, as this is the first school to actually have a facility exclusively for her team and commit to the softball program.
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