University of South Alabama head women’s basketball coach Terry Fowler announced on Tuesday that Rachel Travis has been promoted to associate head coach.
Travis just completed her fourth season as a member of the Jaguar coaching staff, and her first as the program’s recruiting coordinator. During her time on the staff, she has helped South to a 75-53 overall mark — including a school-record 25 victories during the 2018-19 campaign — while finishing at or above .500 in the Sun Belt Conference all four years, a berth in the championship game of the league tournament her second season and back-to-back national postseason appearances.
“Rachel has proven to be a vital member of our program and a key to our success,” said Fowler. “Her energy is infectious, it carries over in every facet of what we do with our current players, our recruits and our fan base. She just breathes air into our program, we want her to be a part of it for a long time.”
In addition to coordinating the Jags’ recruiting efforts and scouting opponents, Travis has worked primarily with the team’s point guards. Her efforts helped Shaforia Kines rank among the Sun Belt leaders in assists each of her last three seasons, while increasing her scoring average from 2.4 points per game as a freshman to 15.9 her final year at the collegiate level as she would be named first-team all-conference. Last season, junior Mahogany Vaught averaged 10.7 points per outing — after scoring 72 total her first two years at South — and finished among the top 10 in the SBC in both assists and steals, highlighted by leading the league and finishing among the top 80 in the country in the latter category, thanks to Travis’ guidance.
Travis was at Longwood for three seasons prior to coming to USA, where she oversaw travel coordination and served as the Lancers’ academic and film liaison while also played a vital role in recruiting, scouting and overseeing the day-to-day basketball operations for the program. Travis spent the previous two years as the head coach at Florida Air Academy — an international school in Melbourne, Fla — where she led the team to a 20-5 overall record, the district championship after posting a 10-0 mark and a berth in the finals of the regional tournament her first season. Her efforts helped FAA also go 19-8 highlighted by a 9-1 district record while advancing to the title game of both the district and region tournaments the following season as well. Travis was also the varsity head girls basketball coach at the Episcopal School of Jacksonville during the 2010-11 and ’11-12 academic years.
A four-year starter and three-year team captain at Northwest (Wash.) University, Travis received her bachelor’s degree from the school in secondary education with an emphasis in health and fitness in 2009. After earning Cascade Conference Player-of-the-Week honors on three occasions during her career, she was a starting guard for the Florida Lady Knight Hawks of the Women’s Blue Chip Basketball League in 2010 before focusing on her coaching career.
Tagged with: South Alabama Sun Belt
