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 | Hometown:
New Lenox, Ill.
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| Position:
Head Coach
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| Experience:
2nd year
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The Healy File
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| • Age: 33 |
| • Alma Mater: DePaul, 1999 |
| • Family: Husband, Shawn; daughter, Grace |
| Coaching Experience |
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• Wisconsin, Head coach, 2010-present
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| • Loyola University (Ill.), Head coach, 2004-2010 |
| • DePaul University, Assistant coach, 2002-2004 |
| Championships |
| • Horizon League: 2007 |
| Awards |
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• Horizon League Coach of the Year: 2007
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| What Others are Saying: |
DePaul head coach Eugene Lenti:
"Yvette Healy is the perfect fit for Wisconsin. She has everything you're looking for in a head coach with her leadership skills as well as her experience. She's a talented offensive coach, who loves to be aggressive, executing hit and runs, squeezes, etc. She's also a great recruiter and family-oriented person who understands what it takes to be a successful student athlete, being that she was an All-American herself."
Arkansas head coach Mike Larabee:
"Yvette is a coach that I have always had great respect for. Her teams are always very well coached, disciplined and know how to play the game with energy and passion. She will do an outstanding job in turning around the Wisconsin softball program."
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Interview with coach Healy 
Yvette Healy is in her second season in 2011-12 as head softball coach at Wisconsin. In her first season at the helm of the program, Healy led the Badgers to 30 wins for just the sixth time in school history. The team's 10-game win improvement over the 2010 season tied for the second-best in school history.
Healy had three players named All-Big Ten. Karla Powell became just the third player in Badger history to be named first-team All-Big Ten and the first since Andrea Kirchberg in 2002. Mary Massei earned second team honors and Jennifer Krueger was selected for the third team.
Of the Badgers' 30 victories in Healy's first season, 15 were comeback wins. Wisconsin also won all 21 games in which it outhit opponents, something no other team in school history had done.
The 2011 Badgers tied for the 11th youngest team within the NCAA. Of the 10 teams with a higher percentage, only Pacific (37-19) had a better record than Wisconsin's 30-23 mark and Nicholls State (25-22) was the only other team with a winning record.
Healy's first season with the Badgers produced record results. As a team, the Badgers recorded the most stolen bases in a season with 107, 37 more than the previous record. Jennifer Krueger became Wisconsin's all-team stolen base leader, finishing with 98. Krueger also set the single-season record with 43 stolen bases, which is more than any other player in Wisconsin history has had in their career. Michelle Mueller also set the school's freshman record for the number of stolen bases in a season with 15.
On July 24, 2010, Healy became the third coach in UW history.
"Yvette Healy has proven herself to be a winner both as a player and a coach," Wisconsin Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez said. "That parallels what we are looking to accomplish here at Wisconsin. We're excited to have her on our staff and we welcome her to the Badgers."
The 2007 Horizon League Coach of the Year, Healy guided the Loyola (Ill.) Ramblers to a top-four conference finish in every season she was at the helm. She has coached four NFCA All-Mideast Region players over the last four seasons, and the team set the single-season school record for batting average (.292) in 2010. Healy's team also set single-season Loyola records for stolen bases (116) and home runs (37) in 2009.
"I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join the University of Wisconsin family,"Healy said. "The UW athletic department has a world-renowned legacy of winning on a national stage and in the Big Ten.I am thrilled to partner with the inspirational leadership team of Barry Alvarez, Shawn Eichorst and Terry Gawlik to bring Badger softball to national prominence.
"The nationally-ranked academic degrees, athletic facilities, financial support and family-atmosphere make Wisconsin a perfect fit for the nation's most talented softball student-athletes. My husband Shawn and I feel extremely fortunate to raise our daughter Grace in Madison, one of the safest, friendliest and most beautiful towns in the country."
As Healy was winning coach of the year honors in the Horizon League in 2007, the team was capturing the conference title with a 14-5 record. Pitcher Amy Solava was also named the league's pitcher of the year, just the third player in school history to earn the award.
Off the field, Healy was instrumental in the team's community service participation. She was a part of numerous campaigns to give back, including the Strike Out Cancer Fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, a team canned food drive and the Shamrocks for Kids Campaign. The team was given the 2007 Horizon League Community Outreach Award.
In addition, Healy served as a mentor for the Girls in the Game program as well as at the Misericordia Home for Mentally and Physically Challenged.
Healy's teams have also excelled in the classroom. The 2010 team was the recipient of the 2010 NCAA Academic Performance Program APR Award, while nine players in her time were named Academic All-District by ESPN the Magazine and 25 were chosen as Scholar Athletes by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association.
She took over as head coach at Loyola in July of 2004 after spending three seasons as an assistant at her alma mater, DePaul. While with the Blue Demons, Healy coached five All-Americans as the team won the Conference USA title in 2003 and 2004 to make the NCAA tournament.
A two time All-American and three-time Academic All-American as a player, Healy ranks second on the DePaul single-season chart with a .424 batting average and is the school's all-time leader with 102 stolen bases. In her senior campaign in 1999, Healy led the Blue Demons to a school-record 54 victories, an NCAA Regional Championship and the College World Series as the team wrapped up the year ranked third in the nation. She earned All-Mideast Region honors on three occasions as well.
Prior to her coaching career, Healy worked for the Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox Academy as Director of Marketing.
Healy earned her bachelor's degree in communication from DePaul in 1999 and her master's in secondary education and English from DePaul in 2007.
