University of Minnesota head women’s basketball coach Marlene Stollings today announced the addition of 25-year coaching veteran Gail Striegler to her coaching staff. Striegler spent the previous seven years establishing herself as the winningest head coach in Long Island University Brooklyn women’s basketball history.
“It’s exciting to add such a highly accomplished coach and outstanding individual to our program,” Stollings said. “Coach Gail brings with her a wealth of coaching experience, including a strong passion for the student-athlete and a tireless work ethic. We look forward to the immediate impact she will have on our program, our community and our University.”
Striegler has a deep tradition of winning at the highest level of collegiate women’s basketball, guiding her teams to three conference championships and eight NCAA Tournament appearances, including a Sweet 16 run as an assistant at Stephen F. Austin State University in 1996. During her head coaching tenure at the University of Central Florida, she was twice named Atlantic Sun Conference Coach of the Year. Striegler has accumulated over 200 wins and coached eleven nationally ranked recruiting classes.
“It is a tremendous honor to be joining Coach Marlene’s staff and the University of Minnesota family,” Striegler said. “Coach Marlene is one of the most dynamic head coaches in the country. I love how passionate she is about her players being successful on the court, as well as her commitment to their success off the court. She is molding future leaders. It is also exciting to be competing in an elite conference like the Big Ten where the best of the best come to play every night. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and I am thrilled to be joining the Gopher family.”
Striegler has proven to be adept at both finding and developing talent, as she has assembled three top-25 recruiting classes and aided in the development of a Naismith finalist, 29 all-conference team selections, a conference rookie of the year, an all-defensive team pick and two all-freshman team honorees as both a head coach and assistant coach.
In her time as the head coach at LIU Brooklyn, Striegler secured a program-best 96 victories, which included two seasons with 20 or more wins. The team’s 22 wins in 2009-10 were the second-most in program history, while her 62 wins from 2009-12 were the most all-time over a three-year period for the Blackbirds.
During her tenure in Orlando from 1999-2007, Striegler led the Knights to three-straight conference championships from 2003-05, coached 22 all-conference selections and 33 academic all-conference honorees. Her teams ranked in the top-20 nationally three times in overall scoring, twice in blocked shots and once in three-point field goal percentage, while she also signed six Street & Smith Honorable Mention All-Americans, all while breaking the UCF all-time attendance record in 2006.
Along with her head coaching stops at LIU Brooklyn and UCF, Striegler has also served as an assistant coach at Georgia State and Northwestern State, as well as Stephen F. Austin State. She began her coaching career as a graduate assistant at Arkansas.
Striegler earned her master’s degree in kinesiology from Arkansas and her bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from Central Arkansas. A native of Fayetteville, Ark., she is a member of the University of Central Arkansas Hall of Fame.
http://www.gophersports.com/sports/w-baskbl/spec-rel/060815aaa.html
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