Gerri Seidl

Head Women's Basketball Coach

Carnegie Mellon’s winningest basketball coach, Gerri Seidl, entering her 24th season as head coach, has built a tough, defensive-minded program designed to compete in one of the best Division III basketball conferences in the nation.

Seidl’s 252 wins, three conference titles and two NCAA tournament appearances, only tell half the story of her significant contributions to Carnegie Mellon University.

“It’s the coaching and the teaching that I enjoy,” says Seidl, who enters her 23rd season in charge of the program “Being with those players, a different group year after year and watching people come in and develop from freshman year to senior year.”

Under her guidance, Seidl and the women’s basketball team have shared many successes on the court.

In 1988-89 the Tartans secured the university’s first-ever President’s Athletic Conference (PAC) Championship. The team posted a 20-7 mark that season and advanced to the second round of the Division III post-season tournament during the first appearance in school history. The following year, the team repeated as PAC Champions with a 17-9 season.

The program continued to make headlines in 1990-91 when Seidl’s group set a school record with 21 wins while capturing the school’s first University Athletic Association (UAA) title. The Tartans earned their second post-season berth and climbed to 16th in the final national poll that season. The following season, the squad went 18-4, a mark that included a 14-game winning streak.

Seidl came to Carnegie Mellon after a six-year stint at Northgate High School. During that tenure, Northgate qualified for the WPIAL playoffs in 1984 a year after winning the schools first tournament title, the Avonworth Christmas Tournament Championship. Prior to being named head coach at Northgate, Seidl served as an assistant during the 1978-79 season.

The Millville, Pa., native earned four varsity basketball letters at Mt. Alvernia High School, where she scored more than 1,000 points during her career. After high school, she accepted a basketball scholarship from the University of Pittsburgh and received her B.A. in secondary education and English in 1978. While at Pitt, in 1977, Seidl visited Peru as a member of the Western Pennsylvania All-Star Women’s Basketball Team.

Outside of the Carnegie Mellon community, Seidl currently serves as the Chair of the WBCA- Coach of the Year committee (COY) and chairs both the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Committee and the Great Lakes Region and the Division III Coach of the Year Committee. She is a member of the Jostens Division III Player of the Year selection committee and has served on the Division III Middle Atlantic Region and Kodak Division III All-America selection committees.

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