Cathy Monroe enters her seventh season at the helm of Missouri S&T's softball program and will seek to continue the program's progress in 2022.
The Miners rebounded from a challenging 2021 season and posted a 17-win improvement in 2022, finishing the season 24-26 overall and 12-16 in GLVC play and were in contention for a spot in the conference tournament until the very last day of the season. During the year, the Miners posted their best start to a season since 2018, going 6-2 over their first eight games. S&T also posted a seven-game winning streak from March 14-20, outscoring their opponents 37-17 over that span, for the longest such winning streak since an eight-game run in 2007. The first game of that streak, a 6-3 win over William Jewell, marked Monroe's 100th career head coaching win. S&T also recorded three doubleheader sweeps in GLVC play, winning twice over SBU, Rockhurst and Illinois Springfield. As a team, the Miners made significant gains from 2021, increasing their run total by nearly 50 and lowering their team ERA by more than three full runs while more than doubling their strikeout total.
In the 2019 season, S&T posted a 15-win campaign as again Avery English garnered All-GLVC Third Team laurels by going 9-7 with a 2.14 ERA with 66 strikeouts in 108 innings of work.
The Miners posted their best season of the Monroe era in 2018, going 27-27 overall and 14-14 in the GLVC and going on a deep run in the postseason at the conference tournament after entering the event at the #8 seed. Five Miners were named All-GLVC selections, headlined by Olivia Young as a First Team utility, while pitcher Avery English, infielders Gretchen Egly and Abby Klein along with utility Monica Weiss were all named Third Team honorees. Young led the league and a set a new single-season program record with 58 RBI and was third with 14 home runs, which tied the S&T single-season mark, while batting .324. In the circle that season, English was an 18-game winner and posted a 2.82 ERA with 126 strikeouts in 218 1/3 innings while holding opponents to a .281 batting average. As a team, S&T posted a 2.82 ERA, batted .279, scored 231 runs and stole 52 bases in 59 attempts.
After leading the Miners to a five-win improvement in her first season with the squad, the team made another six-game jump in the win column in 2017 as they went 22-31 and 14-16 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference. The Miners were in contention for a spot in the GLVC Tournament all the way to the final day of the season with a team that had two all-conference performers. In 2018, the Miners made the GLVC Tournament in a 27-27 campaign and won a pair of games at the event, one of which came over a McKendree team that finished second in the conference that season.
Monroe led S&T to a 16-35 mark in her first year with the team after spending 11Â seasons as an assistant coach at Truman State University, the last two as the program's associate head coach.Â
While at Truman, Monroe served as the acting head coach for the Bulldogs for an eight-game stretch during the early stages of the 2015 season and led them to a 7-1 record in those contests. Truman finished the 2015 campaign with a record of 33-16, including a 21-7 mark in the Great Lakes Valley Conference and made its second straight trip to the NCAA Division II Midwest Regional.
In Truman's first two seasons in the Great Lakes Valley Conference, the Bulldogs posted a record of 76-29 and a 51-13 mark in conference play. Monroe was involved in all aspects of the Bulldog program, including the team's strength program and skill development. She worked primarily with the outfielders on the defensive side and with the entire team offensively, where it finished with a .305 team batting average, 50 home runs and 253 runs scored in 49 games in 2015. The Bulldogs hit better than .300 as a team in each of the last four seasons she spent on the staff.
In addition, she helped coordinate and promote the team's StrikeOut Cancer and Military Appreciation games and was also a founding member of Bulldogs L.E.A.D.E.R.S., a leadership development program with four staff members for student-athletes to help them build skills to become leaders in the future.
Monroe, a 2002 graduate of Truman State with a bachelor's degree in agricultural science, played four seasons for the Bulldogs – including five games against the Lady Miners during that stretch – and served as a team captain during the 2002 season when the Bulldogs reached the NCAA Tournament for the fourth consecutive year.
Three of her former teammates at Truman – Erin Brown, Kristi Bredbenner and Elizabeth Economon – went to become head coaches at the collegiate level.Â
Following her playing career with the Bulldogs, Monroe spent three seasons as the head coach of the junior varsity team at Lutheran High School South in St. Louis before joining the Truman staff prior to the 2006 season when Brown took over as the program's head coach.
