UCF vice president and director of athletics Todd Stansbury lauded Gillispie for her hard work with the softball program.
“Renee has done an outstanding job here at UCF,” Stansbury said. “She has established a softball program that has continuously been able to achieve success on the field and in the classroom and has been very involved in the community. We look forward to seeing even more of this in the future.”
Since starting the program in 2002, Gillispie has led the Knights to three conference championships. UCF captured the first regular-season championship during the inaugural campaign of the American Athletic Conference in 2014. The Knights advanced to the NCAA Regional finals with one of the youngest rosters in the tournament where they fell to eventual Women’s College World Series champion Florida.
Gillispie coached Farrah Sullivan to AAC Player of the Year honors in 2014. She also led Shelby Turnier, Mackenzie Audas, Linnea Goodman and Jessica Ujvari to all-conference honors and a program-best 15 student-athletes were named to the AAC All-Academic Team.
“It’s an honor to be able to represent UCF,” Gillispie said. “I look forward to continuing the tradition of bringing in student-athletes that succeed both on and off the field, as is reflected in having the most players in program history earn conference all-academic honors last season. I want to thank Todd Stansbury for his support as it has helped this program continue to grow.”
The UCF coaching staff was named the American Coaching Staff of the Year, giving Gillispie her first postseason accolade since being named the N4C Conference Coach of the Year while coaching at Joliet (Ill.) Junior College in 1992. She enters the 2015 season with an overall coaching record of 726-531-3, earning 474 of those victories at UCF.
