Hanna Coffel | Student

A Life-Changing Invitation

When DePauw’s softball coach invited Hanna Coffel ’26 to campus as a high school sophomore, it was the first time she had made an official college visit. As it turns out, that visit would also be her last.

“Once I got back, I told my grandma there’s no point in going to any of the other schools,” Coffel recalls. She canceled the visits and interviews she had previously scheduled elsewhere, and from that point on, she set her sights exclusively on Greencastle. “I knew this was where I wanted to be.”

What convinced her that she had found her home? “It was the people, 100 percent,” she says.

At DePauw, Coffel discovered a support network fully invested in her success and well-being. “From the day that I committed, the softball coaches emailed and messaged me weekly,” she says. And when her father tragically passed away just two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer during her senior year of high school, those same coaches showed up for her — literally. “They came to the funeral. They dropped off a huge gift bag. To have that DePauw light at the end of the tunnel was absolutely amazing.”

As Coffel became more familiar with the DePauw community, her soon-to-be coaches weren’t the only ones who impressed her. “On campus or at sporting events or even at work, I would run into so many different DePauw alumni. And there was just this energy and enthusiasm that were so common among all these people.”

Now as a senior, Coffel has quickly internalized that energy and made it part of her own identity. During her time on campus, this first-generation college student from Indianapolis has pushed herself to excel in everything she does. In addition to her contributions on the softball field, Coffel is a double major in history and sociology, she serves the university as a presidential ambassador, she has a leadership role in her sorority Pi Beta Phi, she has completed two summer internships with a Department of Defense agency, and she has been inducted into a pair of honor societies, Chi Alpha Sigma and Phi Alpha Theta.

“The athlete within myself just constantly wants to improve, wants to learn, wants to do something different,” she says. “Something our team prides itself on is leading with character and morality and all the things that will be here after we’re no longer playing softball. We do classroom sessions, we make sure the mental side is staying intact, we do community service.”

That well-rounded approach to her sport has helped Coffel endure setbacks (a broken foot as well as a broken nose) and embrace flexibility (moving to a new position), as she has steadily worked her way into a key role on a team that’s made a habit of winning conference titles and securing postseason berths. It’s also prepared her for the next chapter of her journey, which she hopes will take her to law school.

Looking back on that first visit to campus that started it all, Coffel has no regrets. “If I could go back, I would tell myself, ‘You’re definitely making the right decision.’”