The new University of Illinois Springfield women’s basketball coach Mark Kost has spent his entire college coaching career at the NCAA Division I level.
Kost, 42, was an assistant last season at Charleston Southern and worked primarily with the perimeter players. The previous season, he was an assistant at Morehead State. The Indiana native has spent the bulk of his career at Coastal Carolina. He was on staff there for 10 seasons.
Kost served as the interim head coach in the 2012-13 season and collected six wins during the stint. He was an associate head coach for his final two seasons.
“It gives me some hands on experience of being a head coach,” Kost said. “I was thrust into a situation a couple of years ago where a coach had a medical situation and had to take a leave of absence. I did that for a few months. Even though it wasn’t for a whole season, it gave me training in being a decision maker for the whole program. I learned more that three months than I did the previous 8-10 years before.”
Kost starts at UIS May 18.
UIS was 6-20 overall and 2-16 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference in the 2014-15 season.
Kost graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1995 with a business administration degree.
Topping the list of importance for Kost is getting to know the current UIS players.
“I didn’t get to meet with all of them, but I met with the vast majority of them during the interview process,” Kost said.
We’re going to figure out what they do well and play to those strengths.”
This article appeared online in The State Journal-Register on May 11, 2015.
Read the entire article online.
