Beginning her fourth season at the helm, Shannon Reidy and her staff have put together the necessary pieces to get over the hump and reach the upper echelon of the Horizon League.

Last season, with a starting lineup that featured four sophomores and one freshman, the young Ramblers had a chance to reach the Horizon League's upper division but struggled to find a way to close out games. Loyola finished just 4-8 in 12 conference games decided by 10 points or less and posted a 2-4 record in contests decided by five points or less. Despite the tough results, Reidy and her staff are optimistic for the 2008-09 season. Under Reidy's tutelage and free-flowing offensive system, Brittany Boeke and Keisha Collins were named to the Horizon League All-Newcomer Team while sophomore Maggie McCloskey knocked down a school-record 90 three-pointers, ranking seventh in the nation in that category. Additionally, Jessica Hylton and Elyse VanBogaert both showed tremendous improvement in earning starting roles for the first time while Reidy has supplemented the roster with another terrific recruiting class that includes standouts from Illinois (Ellen Ayoub), Indiana (Lisa Samplawski) and Wisconsin (Lindsey Sebetic).

The 2006-07 Ramblers featured a unique roster, with a vast majority of their production coming from seniors or freshmen. Reidy mentored a pair of All-Horizon League honorees that year, as Marquise Hanser, honored for the second consecutive season under Reidy, and Jenna Real earned postseason awards. Both reached the 1,000-career-point milestone and Real closed out her career as the school's all-time leader in field goal percentage. In addition to those two solid seniors, McCloskey burst onto the scene with a terrific freshman campaign. Her 72 three-point field goals ranked second (now sit her third) on Loyola's single-season chart and her eight treys at Green Bay tied LU's single-game record. A member of the Horizon League All-Newcomer team, McCloskey was just one of five freshmen that were key contributors in 2006-07.

Loyola's improvement came on the heels of a 2005-06 season in which Reidy and her staff began implementing a change in mindset that will positively affect the program for years to come. Building around core values of accountability and integrity, Reidy and the Ramblers laid a foundation that is vital in building a successful program. The Ramblers improved in each and every outing that season, riding the dynamic all-around game of Hanser, who became just the fourth different player in Loyola history to score 500 points in a single season.

Reidy made the move to the North Side after seven successful years as the head coach of Marian Catholic High School. In her seven years at Marian Catholic, Reidy helped turn around a program which had just one 20-win season prior to her arrival into a perennial contender for the Illinois state championship, leading her team downstate three consecutive seasons from 2002-04. After recording a 21-8 mark in 2001, Reidy and her charges emerged in earnest in 2002, posting a 31-2 record and advancing to the IHSA Class AA Championship game before settling for runner-up honors. Marian made a return trip downstate the following season, finishing 29-4 before falling in the Elite Eight and finished the 2003-04 season with a 27-8 ledger, taking home the fourth-place trophy. In 2004-05, the Spartans finished with a 28-3 record, giving the program an impressive 115-17 (.871) record over the last four seasons, and the squad appeared in the USA Today national rankings in three different seasons.

Reidy is a three-time recipient of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association District 8 Coach of the Year award (2002-04) and has earned the same honor from both the Daily Southtown (2002, 2005) and the Illinois Times (2003). In her final season at Marian, four of her graduating seniors earned scholarships to Division I institutions, giving her seven such players over her last four years there.

Reidy graduated from Lake Forest College in 1994, where she was a four-year letterwinner for the Foresters women's basketball team, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration/Economics and special emphasis in education.