Richard Barron is always looking for ways to improve the University of Maine women’s basketball program.
So when Tracy Guerrette announced recently that she was stepping down as the Black Bears’ director of basketball operations, Barron and his staff evaluated how the position would best serve the team.
The result of those discussions was the creation of a Sports Performance Coach position.
“Whenever we make changes, we want to see what areas we think we can improve in and where we can fill gaps,” Barron said. “You look at the strengths of the different people and how we complement each other, that sort of thing. That was the motivation behind it.”
Barron hopes that putting a strength, speed and conditioning coach on the staff will provide women’s basketball players with a more concentrated and consistent sports performance component.
“We want somebody who’s going to be specifically working with our kids and knows our schedule, knows our practices, is able to monitor their fitness levels and less of a cookie-cutter sort of approach to it,” Barron explained.
Mallory Benard has been hired to take on those responsibilities. The 2012 graduate of Bloomsburg University most recently implemented a strength and conditioning program for the women’s soccer team at Springfield University, where she earned a master’s degree in exercise science with a concentration in strength and conditioning.
Previously, she spent a year as an intern at Kansas, where she worked with several different athletic teams.
UMaine has a sports performance staff headed by new director Matt Murray. However, he and Collin Kilburg are responsible for planning and implementing strength, speed and conditioning programs for all other Black Bear teams, with the assistance of some graduate students.
By hiring its own performance coach, women’s basketball can maximize its own efforts in that area.
“We wanted to be able to have someone who’s going to specifically be tailoring programs to individuals and that’s very hard to do when you’re talking about a pool of coaches working with all the athletes,” Barron said.
“This is somebody who’s going to be in our office every day and be traveling with us, at practice, see improvement, those sort of things,” he added.
Barron said Benard also will be responsible for handling travel logistics and other operations-related duties for the women’s basketball program. Although her focus is different, she will be paid the same as Guerrette, according to UMaine athletics spokeswoman Laura Reed.
UMaine on July 2 announced the hiring of assistant coach Edniesha Curry, a former standout at Oregon who played in the WNBA.
Guerrette, a former Black Bear player from St. Agatha, left UMaine after one year to take a position as the director of faith formation for St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Bangor.
Assistant coach Sean Smith, who spent two seasons with the program, is pursuing other opportunities.
“I don’t think it’s good that we’re losing Tracy or Sean, they were both great, but we filled the positions well,” Barron said. “We’re excited about Mallory and we’re excited about Eddie.”
Koizar honored at European tourney
UMaine junior guard Sigi Koizar has been named to the all-tournament team for her efforts with Austria in the European U20 Division B women’s basketball championships.
Koizar played in eight games, averaging 12 points, 8.8 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.4 steals. She notched four double-doubles and was fifth in rebounding in the group.
Austria finished sixth in Group A with a 5-4 record, dropping its last four contests, including Sunday’s 81-51 loss to Boznia and Herzegovina.