Westchester Community College Director of Athletics Michael Belfiore has announced the hiring of Karim McFarlane as the college’s Head Women’s Basketball Coach. McFarlane, a Monroe, New York resident, served as the Interim Head Coach during the second semester of the 2018-19 season after serving one season as Assistant Women’s Basketball Coach at Westchester CC. He has also worked as an Assistant Track and Field Coach for the Vikings, and is currently an adjunct professor in the college’s Physical Education Department.
McFarlane led the Vikings to a 4-6 record as Interim Head Coach beginning in January of 2019, providing Belfiore with more than enough incentive to remove the interim tag.
“During the last few months of the season, we saw the program come together in a way that made this an easy decision. Karim McFarlane did a fantastic job mentoring our young women, and providing them with a wonderful experience, that also saw our team play fiercely competitive basketball. The improvement throughout the year was more than we could have hoped for, and I was very proud of our team, including the Head Coach,” Belfiore said. “Having seen Karim in action in a variety of roles here during the last two years, I think he is the perfect fit for our program. Judging by the way our team responded to Karim this season, and the response thus far from recruits interested in women’s basketball at Westchester Community College, I am very excited for the future of this program.”
McFarlane graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx, where he was a Baseball and Football player, before embarking on a Division I Baseball opportunity at Howard University, ultimately transferring to Mercy College, earning both his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees.
From there, McFarlane began a career in sports that has seen numerous stops, including three years of professional arena football, certification as a USATF Level I Track & Field Coach, and an incredible run of success coaching basketball at the youth and High School levels throughout the New York City Metropolitan area. In addition, he founded My Healthy Community, an anti-obesity non-profit organization in the Bronx, which provides Health and Wellness services to the community free of charge, and coached several championship basketball programs through his organization. He also served as Athletic Director at Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy from 2010-2014 where his teams were responsible for 14 Charter School Athletic Association Champions, coaching the High School Girls’ team to a Charter School Championship, as we all as a Charter School Championship for the Middle School Girls’ Basketball team.
Priority #1 for McFarlane and his staff will be to sponsor a team that will play a full varsity schedule for the 2019-2020 season as Women’s Basketball at Westchester CC enters its third season. Belfiore is confident that the new coach can not only meet this goal, but move the program to even bigger and better things.
“As the season moved along this year, we played very strong basketball against some very good competition, and won a few games against teams that enjoyed a lot of success this year. I think this is a program capable of doing a lot of very good things right away. Coach McFarlane has a vision of establishing a program that can compete with the very best teams in Region XV, and I am confident he will capitalize on the interest we are seeing from recruits, and work hard to achieve his vision for this program.” Belfiore said.
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