Lisa Bluder's coaching history and record: Former Iowa HC's career explored
On Monday evening, the Iowa Hawkeyes' Lisa Bluder announced her retirement from coaching. She has been a coach for more than four decades but only had three stops.
Let's take a closer look at each team she coached during her illustrious career and discuss how she did for each program.
Lisa Bluder's Coaching Career
St. Ambrose
Lisa Bluder spent the first six years of her collegiate head coaching with the St. Ambrose University Bees. She was with the program from 1984-1990 and was a dominant 169-36 in the NAIA. Bluder brought the St. Ambrose Bees to four straight national tournaments and the Final Four of the NAIA Tournament for two consecutive years.
The brightest part of her tenure was in the 1990 season as the program was the top-ranked program in the NAIA and was named the league's Coach of the Year.
Drake
She spent a full decade with the Drake Bulldogs and did incredibly well as she finished that tenure from 1990-2000 with a 187-106 record (.638 winning percentage). She was able to win three Missouri Valley Conference regular season championships (1997, 1998, 2000) and won the MVC four different times for the automatic bid in the NCAA Tournament (1995, 1997, 1998, 2000).
The biggest let down for her was the fact that she led Drake to the NCAA Tournament four times and never made it out of the first weekend.
Iowa
A significant chunk of her coaching career was with the Iowa Hawkeyes as she joined in 2000. She finished with a 533-254 (.677) record. The program made the NCAA Tournament in all but five seasons and made it every year since the 2017-18 season.
The program made back-to-back national championship game appearances and that really boosted her career standing on a national level.
Medals outside of college
She also has been coaching the national team in multiple tournaments. She was an assistant coach for the women's basketball team. She has a pair of medals in international events as she was the head coach for the 2001 United States team in Beijing, China, for the World University Games. She also was the coach for the 2015 Silver Medal-winning team in the Pan American Games in Toronto, Canada.