There was an announcement on MURedHawks.com that Coach Box has named a new coach, Kym Royster. She is pretty young, she played at Indiana from 2016 to 2019 ( so when Coach Box was at IU) She has played professionally in Europe and has coached AAU teams. There was no mention of whom she might be replacing so I looked up the Coaching staff on the same website and it had only 3 coaches listed:
Head Coach Box, Associate Head Coach Wiersma, and assistant coach Megan Belke…So that makes me think that assistants Evelyn Thompson and Keyannah Warthen are no longer here. This would also possibly mean that Megan got a promotion to assistant coach. Again, so far as I know, there has been no announcement that two of our coaches are gone and another got promoted, it just looks that way.
Warthen has been hired as an assistant at IU. Not sure about Thompson.
There’s also a “Leslie Shumate” listed on the contacts site as an assistant coach for next year, but googling shows no results for previous coaching gigs.
The contract says her employment begins June 12 with a salary of $80,000. I did not find any other information about her.
I think Megan became a full assistant coach when she was retained by Coach Box. Keyanna Warthen will be great at Indiana. She was instrumental in the improved play of our guards late last season.
Thanks to Bluesman for a PM telling me who Leslie Shumate is. I am very familiar with 3 of his kids and have watched them play many times. 5th year Senior Katie Shumate was the MVP of the MAC tournament and led Kent State to a surprise championship and NCAA bid. John Shumate was an All MAC big man at Toledo known for his three point shooting. Emma Shumate recently transferred from Ohio State to Michigan State. She did not start at OSU but was in the rotation and averaged 4 ppg last year. I think she has 2 years of eligibility left. According to Blues, Leslie Shumate was the girl’s coach at Newark and someone Coach Box had long been impressed with. Hiring him will give us 3 very experienced male coaches, which I think is very unusual in Women’s basketball.
“very unusual in Women’s basketball”…some of us would say hiring ONE woman for a men’s program would be unusual. Hiring a 3rd man…I for one would call that sad.
So I am guessing Kim Royster has taken Megan Belke’s position as Megan has moved up to an assistant position. Congratulations to Megan, she has worked hard in her time in Oxford and has I think earned this promotion.
Megan’s bio says last year was her second as an assistant. I don’t think she’s been promoted again.
You are trying to make a philosophical point. I understand the point, but I think it is a little outdated. After 45 years of the NCAA Women’s tournament there has been plenty of time for women to develop coaching depth. For a long time women with little experience would often get hired over a man like Shumate who has a long career of successful coaching experience because we were trying to force feed the development of women’s coaching careers. After 45 years I don’t think there is such a need to do that. There has been sufficient time and opportunity for interested women to get the experience needed to be successful and to be the best candidate available, not just automatically get hired because she is a woman. I would say if two candidates are equal, hire the woman, but if there is a clear difference in qualifications, hire the best candidate now. I would also say diversity in the staff is desirable.
I need some help in updating my understanding of how many coaches and their higherarchy Miami basketball staff has. Historically we had 3 assistant coaches and they were all paid different salaries, so that there was a top assistant and a second guy and a third guy. The third guy was not allowed to recruit off campus. So back in Harper’s day Darryl Hedric was the Head Coach and Jerry Pierson the top assistant, Joe Barry #2 and another guy #3. Then we advanced to the point where a Director of Basketball Operations was hired but he could not actually coach the team. So under Charlie Coles Jermaine Henderson was the top assistant, Ryan Pedon was #2, and Jason Grunkemeyer was #3. Sean Mock was the DOBO. Then later we added a 5th guy as a graduate assistant.
I think all those year’s the women’ staff mirrored those positions. So now when I see these announcements of all these coaches being hired as assistants I am not sure of what the higherarchy is and what duties they are allowed to perform. The announcements are just calling them coaches with no distinction other than I think each staff has one coach called the associate head coach ( although last year the men had two guys called the associate head coach.
For those of you who have been a part of the coaches video conferences can any of you clear up what the current rules are regarding number of full time coaches and other positions and duties they are allowed to perform?
What I would call sad is Coach Hendrix immediately erasing the success of the prior regime and turning Miami into one of the worst programs in the MAC in her four seasons. As well as giving our university embarrassing national publicity for having an inappropriate relationship with one of the players. After that, I eagerly welcome any change in leadership.
Sorry, not trying to be philosophical. I was being realistic…come on now. I guess I’ll ask everyone to harken back to Coach Muffet McGraw’s press conference about 4 yrs ago now about hiring practices. Youtube it. She pretty well knocked it out of the park that day. There are not enough Coach Pops in this world or Andy Geigers as Head D 1 Administrators…trust me. Having one’s resume as a woman coaching candidate to be viewed as equal to a man’s? That is a rarity I pray is changing. Guess when I see more than even let’s say 10% of men’s D 1 bball coaches be women, I might have a little hope. But alas, for now I’ll keep making my philosophical points because that is what my Miami Sports Critical Theorist grad education taught me to do. And to whoever that was that sent me a private message criticizing my statement by using the example of hiring the previous Head Coach…please. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” She should never have been hired in the first place for various other reasons. And using the nationwide negative headlines as a rationale of what seemed a “look where hiring the last woman got us” approach…more should have been gone IMHO for that disaster. But that is old news on this board. So, do the ol’ playback of Muffet - it will explain much of why after 45 yrs we are still more than tired of the misogyny in coaching at all levels.
The official announcement of JR Shumate as an assistant coach was on MURedHawks.com this week. I just wanted to point out that he has a truly impressive resume and he should have outstanding recruiting connections in the Columbus area. Hopefully he will help us get some of the top Ohio talent.
Royster played for Shumate at Newark. East-central Ohio represent!
So you’re saying Box should tap Muffet about his staff?