Lisa Tinkler just completed her fourth season as the only coach of the Drury women’s golf program, having taken it to amazing heights in a short time.

In her inaugural effort (2003-04), the Panthers became an immediate force with a squad built virtually around freshmen, winding up 40th nationally in the Golfstat rankings. They followed that up a year later by winning the Heartland Conference championship, sharing the title of the NCAA-II’s West Regional and picking up an eighth-place finish at the NCAA national championships.

This past season Drury finished fourth at the national tournament and captured the GLVC championship. In the 2005-06 school year, Tinkler's Panthers opened Great Lakes Valley Conference play with a bang, capturing the league title in the fall while Tinkler earned the GLVC Coach of the Year distinction (after taking the same honor in the Heartland Conference the year before).

Tinkler is quite a player in her own right, competing for the Evangel University team at the age of 39 and qualifying for the NAIA national championships, where she finished 14th in the nation and earned All-America status before receiving her degree from Evangel a year later in 2003.

She is a four-time Springfield city champion who has finished in the top 15 at the Missouri State Amateur championships every year since 1996.

The Leawood, Kansas native is a member of the Springfield LPGA-USGA Girls Golf Club, and last winter was the only golf coach nationally invited to participate in the prestigious NCAA Women Coaches Academy in San Antonio, Texas, the first D-II women’s golf coach selected since the conferences began in 2003. She also recently completed the NCAA Dimension 2 series of classes, an extension of the NCAA Women's Coaches Academy.

Locally, Tinkler is heavily involved with the LPGA-USGA Girls Golf Club, the Southwest Missouri Junior Golf Association and is one of the founders of ChalkTalk, a group of coaches of women's sports who meet monthly to discuss issues regarding their profession.

Lisa and her husband, Casey, have three children: Adriane (22), Travis (19) and Olivia (15).