Nancy Funk retires from JHU after 31 years

Last month, long-time Johns Hopkins men’s basketball head coach Bill Nelson announced his retirement. Now the Blue Jays will be looking to replace another long-time basketball head coach. Nancy Funk announced on Tuesday that she will be retiring as the head coach of the Blue Jays women’s basketball team at the end of the academic year. She leaves the program as the all-time winningest coach in program history after 31 years. The Blue Jays will conduct a national search for her success.

“After much thought and careful consideration, I have decided to retire from the position I hold so dear as the head women’s basketball coach at Johns Hopkins University,” Funk said in a statement. “Thirty-one years ago, legendary Director of Athletics Bob Scott gave me a tremendous opportunity when he offered me this position. His guidance and support, along with that of his successors, Tom Calder and Alanna Shanahan, made it a blessing to work at this University that I love and respect so very much.”

Funk guided the Blue Jays to 537 victories, 26 winning seasons, four Centennial Conference Championship and 10 NCAA Tournament appearances in her tenure. Johns Hopkins went to six straight NCAA Tournament from 1995-2000 and advanced to the NCAA Quarterfinals in 1997 and 1998. She also took the Blue Jays to the Sweet 16 in 1995 and won at least one game in the NCAA Tournament nine out of their 10 appearances.

“It is easy to measure the success of a head coach by wins and losses, but that doesn’t begin to tell the whole story of the career of Nancy Funk at Johns Hopkins,” Johns Hopkins’ Director of Athletics and Recreation Alana Shanahan said in a statement. “Yes, her legacy includes conference championships, NCAA Tournament appearances and more victories than any women’s coach in school history, but she also mentored so many young coaches – male and female – who came to Johns Hopkins and built highly-successful programs of their own. In several years we will celebrate 50 years of women’s athletics at Johns Hopkins; in that time there will not likely have been a more prominent figure than Nancy Funk.”

Under Funk’s guidance, there have been 80 all-conference selections, spanning times in the Centennial, UAA, and MAC conferences. She has coaches four Centennial Conference Players of the Year, six WBCA All-Americans, two Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award winners, and two NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship recipients. Ten of her players have been inducted into the Johns Hopkins Athletic Hall of Fame. Funk was inducted in 2015. She was a two-time Centennial Conference Coach of the Year and two-time WBCA Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year.

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Corey Johns

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You could say Corey was born to become a sports journalist. His father won a national championship coaching college soccer. His mother is a baseball fanatic who hasn't missed seeing an Orioles game since 1983 (literally, sometimes it's annoying). His great uncle was a big-time boxing promoter and his maternal grandfather was once a department head at the Baltimore Sun. Basically, sports and journalism run through his blood. He played just about every little league sports there was when he was a kid and was a multi-sport athlete in high school; even playing in the first-ever high school sanction Rugby game in the country. Eventually he retired from sports as an undefeated Maryland state Rugby champion as a high school senior. Perhaps lack of athletic talent has more to do with the retirement, but he will tell you that it more had to do with a great desire to jump right into media. Upon his graduation from University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a triple communications major, Corey started the So Much Sports network and has continued to grow his websites and continues to work to make them premier sports media outlets.

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