After unveiling a prolific recruiting class this summer, first-year Eureka women’s basketball coach Jaylynn Stewart has announced the addition of two new assistant coaches.
This season, the program will welcome former University of Arkansas player and local high school coach Leslie Howard and former MacMurray assistant coach Andrew Mitchell.
“I am ecstatic about the additions of both Coach Leslie and Coach Drew to our staff,” Stewart said. “Both are incredible basketball minds, but are also all about the players. Our program is lucky to have them aboard.”
Howard, a 2007 Arkansas graduate, joins the Red Devils after spending five seasons on the Limestone girls basketball coaching staff. She was the head sophomore coach for three seasons and a varsity assistant for two seasons. Prior to that, she spent three years on the Peoria Notre Dame girls basketball staff.
Howard played in 49 games in two seasons as a shooting guard at Arkansas. During the 2005-06 season, she averaged 10.4 points per game while shooting 41 percent from 3-point range. She led the team in SEC play with 11.2 points per game and dropped a career-high 24 points in an upset over No. 24 Florida. The following season, she helped Arkansas go 18-13.
Howard also played a season and a half of Division I basketball at Colorado, and before that, she was a standout four-sport high school athlete in Missouri, finishing her prep career as Salem High School’s all-time leading scorer with 2,152 points and a first team all-state honoree.
Mitchell has been an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at MacMurray for the past two seasons. He’ll reunite with six MacMurray transfers who joined the Red Devils this summer after the college announced it was closing earlier this year.
Prior to coaching for the Highlanders, Mitchell was a voluntary assistant coach at Western Illinois for two seasons. There, he assisted the Leathernecks in their first ever advancement to the NCAA Tournament in 2016-17 and first WNIT bid in 2017-18.
A 2018 Western Illinois graduate, Mitchell received his degree in exercise science and will receive his master’s in sports management in 2021.
http://eurekareddevils.com/sports/wbkb/2020-21/releases/20200810m2o02m
