Host Dave Fiore speaks with Sue Semrau, the winningest women’s basketball coach in Florida State history. Coach Sue will tell you the wins were never really the point, but they gave her the capital to keep doing what she was really passionate about – teach.
She grew up in Seattle, the daughter of two schoolteachers, and arrived in Tallahassee in 1997 to take over a program that had gone 5-22 the year before. Twenty-four years, 492 wins, three Elite Eights and a National Coach of the Year award later, she retired in 2022 — partly because the game had changed and partly because her mother needed her. Both were enough.
Along the way she turned down opportunities to leave, including a chance to go back home to Washington, because Tallahassee had become something she wasn’t willing to walk away from.
Since retiring she has helped found the First 12, a local initiative built around one simple idea — get the people and organizations serving the city’s most vulnerable neighbors into the same room and let the relationships do the work.
They talk about coaching, community and what it looks like to build something that outlasts the final score.
