At Purdue, basketball coach made $632,926. Here’s how much she will make at USC Beaufort

Moving from one of the premier college conferences in the country to USC Beaufort does not come without its costs. In new basketball coach Sharon Versyp’s case, that cost appears to be about a half-million dollars a year in salary.

Versyp’s salary at USC Beaufort is $567,926 less than it was at Purdue University in 2021.

Versyp was named the first head coach of USC Beaufort women’s basketball in October. The Sand Sharks will compete in the Peach Belt Conference in the 2023-24 season.

According to her contract, Verysp will be paid $65,000 at USC Beaufort. According to Purdue’s latest salary data, she made $632,926 in 2021 at Purdue.

Verysp’s contract was obtained by the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette through a Freedom of Information Act request. USCB had refused to reveal Verysp’s salary at the time of her hiring announcement.

Versyp said she didn’t consider salary when making her decision to come to USCB.

“It’s not about the pay cut,” she said. “I was retired. I didn’t have to work another day in my life,” Versyp said Monday in an interview.

Versyp retired from Purdue in September 2021 after the university completed an internal investigation into her alleged mistreatment of players. Versyp said she was scheduled to retire regardless of the investigation’s outcome.

The investigation, which concluded September 2021, found “no factual basis of disciplinary action that resulted in suspension, demotion or discharge” regarding Versyp, according to The Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Indiana.

The investigation did find fault with Terry Kix, the program’s director and assistant coach, according to the newspaper. Kix resigned rather than face disciplinary action, the paper reported. Her resignation came on the same day as Versyp’s retirement announcement.

Coaching wasn’t about money even when she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Versyp.

“It was zero factor. I’ve never done coaching or been in coaching for the money,” she said.

Instead, she said it is about the experiences.

“Young people and I, as an adult, continue to learn life skills through it, ” she said. “[We learn] how to handle adversity, how to handle good moments, building a team, being positive teammate, you become a family. It’s all of those things.”

Versyp previously told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette she came to Beaufort because she owned property here and and vacationed here for the past 20 years.

USC Beaufort also hired its first head coach in men’s basketball history at the same time as Versyp. Ron Fudala will also be making $65,000 and tasked with building the program from the ground up, according to records obtained by the newspapers.

Fudala has been the associate head coach for Indiana University Pennsylvania, a Division II NCAA team, for the last four seasons. Versyp was the winningest coach in Purdue history, with 301 victories in her 15 seasons there. She coached at Indiana and Maine before Purdue and has won 418 games between the three schools.

“I think anytime, anywhere that you can do some equality, it’s always nice,” she said. “I have no idea why they made those decisions, but compliments to them.”

The university predetermined the salaries to be the same before recruiting based on similar coaches salaries.

“We had access to the Peach Belt Conference salaries in basketball and so we created a salary that we thought was competitive,” Athletic Director Quin Monahan said. “We kept the the salary lines exactly the same for both men and women.”

Versyp and Fudala have the highest salaries of any coach at USC Beaufort. The head baseball coach’s salary is the next highest at $53,300. The men and women’s track and cross country coach makes the least at between $30,000 and $40,000.