Emily Cline was named the head women's basketball coach at Knox College on May 26, 2008.
Cline's teams have steadily improved in her time at Knox and the team has finished with a winning record in each of the last five seasons (70-51 overall). The team made their first Midwest Conference Tournament appearance in over 20 years in 2017-18. They went again in 2019-20. In both 2017-18 and 2019-20 the team won 16 games, the most since 1989-90. They also set a new school record with 11 conference wins in each of those seasons.
Cline has recruited and coached the all-time leading scorer Jarrelyn McCall as well as third and fourth on the all-time list. The team has set 20 school records in her time at Knox and she is the winningest coach in the history of the women's basketball program. The 2015-15 team led the nation in rebounds per game and were second in the country in scoring (90.0 points per game).
Cline spent the 2007-2008 season as an assistant women's basketball coach at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. The Beavers had a 13-13 record and qualified for the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament in her only season on the staff. Before arriving at BVU, Cline spent the previous four seasons as the assistant coach at Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee.
Cline's Prairie Fire squads have set numerous new school records during her tenure, including 18 by the 2014-15 team that led NCAA Division III in steals per game (18.5) and offensive rebounds per game (22.1) while ranking second in the nation in scoring offense (90.0 points per game) and 3-point field goals per game (10.5). Knox also posted the most wins by the program in Midwest Conference play since the 1996-97 season and broke through with the most victories in a season since the 2001-02 campaign.
A native of Farmington, Iowa, Cline lettered in five sports: volleyball, basketball, track and field, softball, and cross country at Harmony High School. She received her associate of arts degree in social work from East Central College in Union, Missouri in 1998 before earning a secondary education/english degree from Cornell College in 2001. She was an all-conference basketball and softball player at both East Central and Cornell. Cline toured with an Athletes in Action women's basketball team through Bolivia in the summer of 2002 and coached in Costa Rica in late spring of 2013.
Cline got her coaching start as a student assistant at Cornell in 2000. She was a graduate assistant women's basketball coach at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania during the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 seasons. She earned a master's degree in organizational leadership from Mercyhurst before moving to Sewanee in August of 2003. Besides coaching basketball, Cline was the interim head softball coach at Sewanee in 2007.
In 2013, Cline coached in Costa Rica to kick off a series of overseas coaching efforts. She continued with Ireland (2015), Germany, Austria, and Italy (2017), and the Netherlands (2019).
Cline has also coached women's golf at Knox.
