Coaching Staff

Women - Basketball - Head Coach

Email: Patrick Cunningham

Nothing wrong with ‘same auld lang syne’ with the Lady Matadors’ Women’s Basketball program. Four straight years of Region I Finals appearances. 11 consecutive seasons of 18 wins or more. And 13 straight years of Patrick Cunningham leading the program to success. He’s the only coach the program has ever known, having been hired away from Yavapai College in Prescott (where he was a longtime men’s and women’s assistant basketball coach) in 1999 to build the program from the ground up. Since then, it’s been nothing but success for the cardinal & gold under Cunningham, with a pair of 30-win seasons, 3 ACCAC Regular Season titles, 7 Region I Finals appearances, 9 playoff berths, and one Region I Championship (in 2002) and the trip to the NJCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament that went along with it (which included the Lady Mats’ first-ever national tournament win). Cunningham has never led a Matador team to a losing record, and that sustained success has brought sustained national respect as the Lady Mats are perennial residents of the NJCAA Women’s Basketball Poll, having risen as high as #2 at one point. They also finished with a national ranking of 8th, 17th, and 11th over a three-year stretch from 2002 to 2004. During their 13 years of existence, the Matadors have produced 12 NJCAA All-American players, 5 State Farm WBCA All-Americans, 2 NJCAA All-Academic All-Americans and have sent 18 student-athletes to Division I programs. On the academic side, two of Cunningham’s last five teams have reached the status of NJCAA All-Academic Teams for a cumulative grade point average of more than 3.0. Cunningham knows about job security, since his coaching resume’ spans nearly 20 years but only involves two programs: AWC & Yavapai.
Cunningham is currently a Professor for the Business and Liberal Arts Division (BLAD) at AWC in addition to his coaching duties. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration and Economics from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and a Master's degree in Business Administration from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He’s also been a bank manager and financial administrator in the professional world. Cunningham resides in Yuma with his son, Logan, fiancee’ Nellie Castanon and her daughters, Nadia and Sabrina.

 Regina Schlichter

Assistant - Women's Basketball

E-Mail:  Regina Schlichter

She spent several years with nothing but green & gold in her basketball wardrobe, yet Regina Schlichter had absolutely no problem getting used to cardinal and gold as a valued member of the AWC Women’s Basketball coaching staff a year ago. Matador fans are glad she was able to make that seamless transition, since she and current boss, Patrick Cunningham, meshed immediately, and led the Lady Mats to another Region I Finals appearance last March. Schlichter and Cunningham should mesh well, since the similarities between their coaching backgrounds are plentiful. Like Cunningham, Schlichter came to AWC after being a longtime assistant (and, from 2007 until 2011, Associate Head Coach) at Yavapai College in Prescott, and has never coached anywhere else but those two schools. Like her current boss, she also has been a part of nothing but sustained success at both institutions, and had an integral part in creating that. Schlichter was Brad Clifford’s main assistant coach with the Roughriders’ Women’s Basketball program for six years, focusing on recruiting, strength and conditioning, helping student-athletes with their studies, and on the court, working with the Lady ‘Riders’ post players. Schlichter was able to draw on plenty of past playing experience on that last part of the job description, since she came to Yavapai after a stellar four-year college playing career at NCAA Division I St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania. She missed only three games for the Red Flash over her four seasons, helped lead SFU to win 71% of their games during that time, and was team co-captain as a senior. Her rookie season at AWC last season also continued an incredible trend for Schlichter: as a college player and an assistant coach, she’s never experienced a season where her team didn’t go to a postseason tournament. Schlichter earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management while at SFU.

Women - Basketball - Assistant Coach

Email: Stephanie Jauregui

There have been many pillars that have been present during Patrick Cunningham’s extremely successful 14-year tenure with AWC Women’s Basketball. Not many have been as strong a pillar as Stephanie Jauregui, who has been at Cunningham’s side for 13 of those 14 years, making her the 2nd-longest tenured assistant coach in the entire Matador Athletic program. Jáuregui signed on with the Lady Matadors in the program’s second year of 2000-01, and was an integral part of their drive to Salina and their first-ever NJCAA Tournament berth just one year later. Jauregui also continues to be the team’s Strength & Conditioning Coordinator while working in the school’s Fitness Center. Before coming to Yuma, Jáuregui was making history by leading the Bagdad High School varsity girls’ basketball team to the Arizona State Playoffs for the first time in school history. The Lady Sultans made two postseason appearances during her four-year tenure at the helm of the program. Jáuregui-or ‘Tep’ as she’s commonly known-was also the head coach for Bagdad’s boys’ basketball team for two years during that time. A standout during her playing days on the court for the Yavapai Roughriders’ women’s basketball program, ‘Tep’ moved on to the University of Arizona, where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree. It was during that 2-year stint at YC that Jáuregui’s work ethic and knowledge of the game first caught the eye of longtime Roughriders’ assistant Cunningham, who was inspired to offer her a job on his staff when he came to AWC.