Deb Patterson

College: Kansas State University Position: Women's Head Coach Coaching experience: 22 years Hometown: Rockford, Ill. Alma Mater: Rockford College '79 Trivia: With a 240-138 record entering this season, Patterson is the all-time winningest coach in K-State history.

(To read Sharing the Victory's full feature on Patterson and Kansas State's Shalee Lehning, click here.)

On being elected to the Kansas FCA Coaches Hall of Fame…
"It’s just unbelievably humbling and just an extraordinary blessing to me to know that. All I can say is that when you have the opportunity to be recognized in association with a ministry that is touching young people’s lives as its mission, I just can’t think of anything more fulfilling. So, to me, that award was just a reflection of having the privilege of being associated and recognized by a group and a ministry that I have so much care and respect for the mission. It was extremely humbling, very gratifying in terms of just feeling the blessing of that.

"My feeling was the graciousness of FCA and the graciousness of God to even think about me as significant was very, very humbling and very meaningful to me."

On how FCA has developed her as a person and a coach…
"There’s always this extraordinary perspective in that it grows you in terms of understanding the heart of the young people that you coach, the importance of their relationship with Christ and trying to cultivate and honor it and build it up in a society and world of sports in which everything is really pretty performance-oriented. And it’s very ‘You won, you lost,’ and it’s very judgment-oriented. So, to me, FCA is that balance for young people and for coaches, a support system, that sense of being built up and reminded each and every day of why you’re here and why you do what you do – the significance and the ever-presence of God in all things, including this unbelievably competitive, hard-core, stressful environment that Division I can be."