14 Nov Lori Culler: Winningest Active Women’s Basketball Coach in NAIA Division II

Lori Culler, coach of the Lady Foresters, has been cited as the winningest active women’s basketball coach in NAIA Division II. She has accumulated 560 wins over the last 31 years for a win percentage of .607. She has now begun her 31st year as coach, and the team is off to a 4-1 start.

Lori is the daughter of Rev. Garry and Lois Culler, a long-time ministerial couple in Pennsylvania. Garry is currently Congregational Care Pastor at Mount Pleasant UB church in Chambersburg, Pa. Lori’s brother, Bobby, is youth pastor of Mount Pleasant.

Lori’s teams have racked up these accomplishments:

• NCCAA national championships in 1991 and 1992.
• 23 winning seasons, with an average of 18 wins per season.
• Seven conference titles, with five teams going undefeated in the conference.
• Six trips to the NAIA national tournament, finishing in the Sweet Sixteen three times.
• 29 players named as NAIA or NCCAA all-Americans.
• 70 players named to all-conference teams.
• Two conference Players of the Year: Amy Bechtel (1999) and Miranda Palmer (2017).

In addition to coaching, Lori Culler has been the Huntington University athletic director 1995-2001 and 2009 to the present. She graduated from HU in 1986, having starred on the 1984 NCCAA national championship basketball team.

Twice, Culler was named NCCAA National Coach of the Year, and she has been the conference Coach of the Year nine times. In October 2006, she was inducted into HU’s Athletic Hall of Fame.