Highlights from the 2011 Oklahoma State Cowgirl Soccer season, where OSU won its fifth Big 12 Conference Championship and advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight for the second straight year.
Since becoming the first head coach in Oklahoma State soccer history more than a decade ago and spending the last four as an assistant coach, Karen Hancock has helped build the Cowgirl soccer program into a force in the Big 12 Conference and on the national scene.
Oklahoma State hired Hancock on Feb. 1, 1996, to begin a new era in the long tradition of sports at OSU, and she piloted the Cowgirls to a 10-7-2 record in their inaugural campaign.
Following the season, OSU received recognition as one of the top 10 first-year soccer programs in the nation. The Cowgirls competed with 31 other Division I schools in 1996 to earn this honor from Soccer Buzz Magazine.
Hancock spent the next 10 seasons as OSU's head coach. She guided the Cowgirls to an 110-89-19 record and helped lead the program into the national spotlight as represented by the Cowgirls' first ever NCAA Tournament win in 2006. OSU finished the year with a school-record 17 wins and climbed as high as No. 7 in the national polls. Their 8-1-1 Big 12 regular season mark placed them second in the conference. Hancock also registered her 100th win at Oklahoma State with a 1-0 home victory over Kansas on Sept. 22, 2006.
Hancock, along with co-head coach Colin Carmichael, earned Big 12 Coach of the Year honors and Central Region Coach of the Year accolades in 2006. The pair was also runner-up for National Coach of the Year honors. Hancock was also the Big 12 Co-Coach of the Year in 2002.
Hancock played her collegiate soccer at the University of Tulsa, where she was a four-year starter between 1987 and 1990. She served as the team captain for three seasons and was named TU's Most Inspirational Player in 1989 and 1990. Also in 1990, Hancock was awarded the Best Defensive Player of the Year Award.
Upon graduating from TU, Hancock began her coaching career at Bishop Kelley High School in Tulsa, Okla. She left Bishop Kelley in 1991 to become the assistant coach at Arkansas-Little Rock, and in 1994, she left UALR and accepted the head coaching job at the South Alabama.
Starting the women's soccer program from scratch at South Alabama, she was able to amass a record of 21-13-2 in the program's first two years. USA compiled a record of 11-6 in its first season of competition under Hancock. The second year was even better as the Jaguars went 10-7-2 and were recognized as the eighth best team in the Central Region.
A native of Tulsa, Okla., Coach Hancock earned a B.S. degree in speech pathology from the University of Tulsa in 1990 and a master's degree in secondary education from Arkansas-Little Rock in 1994. She holds a USSF "B" Coaching License.
The former Karen Horstman and her husband, the late Will Hancock, have a daughter, Andrea, who was born on November 16, 2000.
