Adrienne Shibles’ Hall-of-Fame coaching career began at Colby College following her outstanding basketball career at Bates College, where she scored 1,005 points before graduating in 1991.
She went on to become an assistant coach for the Colby women’s basketball and soccer teams in Waterville before landing head basketball coaching jobs at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Bowdoin College and Dartmouth in New Hampshire.
The Knox native is returning to Colby as the head women’s basketball coach, replacing Chenel Harris-Smith, who stepped down after seven seasons to become the director of athletics at the Woodward School in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Shibles has a career record of 419-163 at the Division III level.
She is the winningest coach in Bowdoin College history with 281 to go with just 67 losses, and she led the Polar Bears to 11 NCAA Tournament appearances and eight Sweet Sixteen berths in her 12 seasons. Her Bowdoin teams won at least 21 games in every season but one.
The team went to back-to-back NCAA Division III championship games in 2018 and 2019, losing to Amherst College and Thomas More University, respectively.
She was named the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Division III National Coach of the Year in 2019 and is a two-time Regional Coach of the Year and NESCAC Coach of the Year.
Prior to Bowdoin, she had spent nine seasons at Swarthmore, where she became the school’s winningest coach with 138 wins. She led the Garnet to its only NCAA Division III Tournament berth.
After coaching at Bowdoin in Brunswick, Shibles moved on to Division I Dartmouth College where she went 5-49 in her two seasons.
She left Dartmouth to become the associate director of athletics and then the senior women’s administrator at Bates College in Lewiston.
The former Mount View High School of Thorndike standout has been inducted into the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame and the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.
Shibles said in a press release that she is looking forward to guiding the Mules.
“I am incredibly inspired by the innovative spirit, ambition and commitment to excellence that define the Colby community,” Shibles said. “It’s the perfect fit for me. I am excited to lead this group of young women and to build on the tremendous potential within this program.”
She also said from her first coaching stint at Colby, she was “enormously thankful to Dick Whitmore and Carol Anne Beach, who were both supervisors and mentors and had a tremendous impact on my career and the coach I am today.”
“I will always be grateful to the Bates and Bowdoin communities, and to the many people who have made my career in athletics so special. Having grown up near Waterville, returning to Colby brings me closer to family and makes this homecoming especially meaningful,” said Shibles.
Colby went 71-76 under Harris-Smith and played in the 2024-25 NESCAC championship game.
Amanda DeMartino, Colby’s director of athletics, called Shibles a “proven winner, a tireless mentor and a true leader in Maine basketball history whose track record at the highest levels of Division III speaks for itself.”
“Her exceptional ability to recruit and develop elite student-athletes, paired with her deep alignment with Colby’s values and vision for excellence, makes her the ideal leader for our program,” DeMartino said. “We couldn’t be more excited for the future of Colby women’s basketball under her leadership.”