Former WNBA player Tamara Moore to coach men's hoops team at Mesabi Range College
Former Wisconsin and WNBA guard Tamara Moore has been hired as the men's basketball coach at Mesabi Range College in Minnesota, making her the only female head coach of a men's collegiate program in the country.
"I'm beyond blessed to start this new decade with this amazing honor," Moore wrote on her Facebook page. "I would like to thank Mesabi Range College for this great opportunity & I know we will be successful."
Moore starred at Wisconsin from 1998-2002 and then played in the WNBA from 2002 to 2007 for seven different teams.
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Mesabi Range is a community college in Virginia, Minnesota, about 200 miles north of Minneapolis. The Norsemen compete in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). Moore inherits a program that went 6-19 last season. She will also serve as the school's softball coach.
"Now, it's time for me to show you guys and show people that women are just as knowledgeable as men to coach the game," Moore told ESPN.
Currently, 11 women are coaching as assistants in the NBA. But there haven't been as many female assistants in the NCAA. Maine assistant Edniesha Curry was the only woman serving as a Division 1 men's assistant at the start of 2019-20.
Kerri-Ann McTiernan was the first woman in the country to head coach a men's college team at the junior college level when she was named coach at New York's Kingsborough Community College in the 1990s.