After twenty-five years at the program’s helm, SUNY Cortland head coach Julie Lenhart is retiring with the end of her team’s 2019 season.
The season came to an end for the Red Dragons on Monday with a 9-inning loss in the regional championship. In a tweet following the last game of her coaching career, Lenhart said, “I knew it was coming eventually, and there will always be a hole in my heart left by all the athletes I have coached. I love the game but I love my “flock” the most. Thank You!”
Lenhart, a veteran of more than three decades of coaching, has spent twenty-five of those years at SUNY Cortland, leading the Red Dragons to seventeen trips to the NCAA Division III playoffs. That number includes the team’s 2019 NCAA berth, which was clinched with their capturing of the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) title.
During Lenhart’s tenure at SUNY Cortland, the Red Dragons have reached the World Series seven times, finishing as high as national runners-up in 2013. Lenhart and her staff have earned seven Northeast Region Coaching Staff of the Year awards, while she has been named the SUNYAC Coach of the Year on five occasions, most recently in 2015.
With more than 900 wins to her credit during her career, including five years as the head coach at Wisconsin-Platteville, Lenhart is one of just six coaches in Division III history to reach the 900-win plateau. She earned the 800th victory of her SUNY Cortland tenure earlier this year.
A member of the induction class of 2014, Lenhart is enshrined in the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) Hall of Fame.
