Katie Meier retires as Miami ladies’s basketball coach

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Katie Meier, who led the Miami ladies’s basketball group to 10 NCAA tournaments and guided the Hurricanes to the Elite Eight final season, introduced her retirement from teaching Thursday.

Meier, the 2011 Related Press Nationwide Coach of the Yr who had 4 years remaining on her contract with the Hurricanes, will stay with the college as a particular adviser and ambassador for the athletic division. She coached at Miami for 19 seasons, going 362-208 in that span.

Her determination to retire — and it was her determination to maneuver into a brand new position, an concept that she dropped at the college herself — means Miami may have a brand new coach for less than the second time in 36 years subsequent season. Ferne Labati coached at Miami for 17 seasons earlier than Meier was employed in 2005, and now the varsity will embark on a nationwide seek for a alternative.

“Nineteen years in the past, I used to be supplied my dream job to be the pinnacle coach of the College of Miami, and whereas I’ve completely beloved dwelling that dream, it’s with a coronary heart stuffed with pleasure and gratitude that I announce my retirement from teaching,” Meier mentioned. “Miami is an extremely particular place, and my journey right here has been an honor and a privilege. Right now is a day to rejoice and mirror on the superb success that was achieved by way of collaboration with excellent individuals.”

Meier spent 23 seasons as a head coach, the primary 4 at Charlotte and the remaining at Miami.

Among the many duties which can be envisioned in her new position: additional assist with fundraising for girls’s packages, serving as a mentor and liaising with alumni. She has lengthy been concerned with fundraising at Miami, even making sizable donations herself and difficult others in the neighborhood to comply with her lead to assist ladies’s athletes on the college.

“Her listing of accomplishments speaks for itself, however her legacy extends far past the courtroom,” athletic director Dan Radakovich mentioned. “She has been an unbelievable ambassador not just for Miami basketball however for the game of girls’s basketball and for the College of Miami. We’re excited to proceed working with Katie as a member of the Hurricanes household.”

Meier’s legacy is strong as each a participant and a coach. Think about simply her Atlantic Coast Convention accolades: rookie of the yr at Duke in 1986, first-team All-ACC as a participant in 1990, a member of the ACC’s fiftieth anniversary group, an ACC legend choice in 2006 and its ladies’s coach of the yr in 2011.

She additionally went into Duke’s Corridor of Honor in 2002, was named USA Basketball’s coach of the yr in 2013 and have become a part of Miami’s Corridor of Fame in 2017.

“Studying about who she is, the competitor she is, you may see why Miami was so engaging to us,” former Miami guard Hanna Cavinder mentioned in the course of the group’s run to the Elite Eight final season.

Beneath Meier, Miami made 91 appearances within the AP High 25. As a No. 9 seed, the Hurricanes pulled off three upset wins in final season’s NCAA match — topping Oklahoma State, top-seeded Indiana after which Villanova, earlier than falling to eventual nationwide champion LSU within the regional remaining. It was the second consecutive season the place Miami was ousted by the eventual NCAA titlist; South Carolina beat the Hurricanes within the second spherical of the 2022 tourney.

Meier usually spoke about her upbringing and the way that formed her as a coach.

She by no means met her father; Gerry Meier, who performed for Ray Meyer at DePaul, died in a airplane crash 4 months earlier than she was born. Meier’s mom ultimately married a widower and every introduced 4 youngsters into what she has referred to as “a Brady Bunch household.”

There was private tragedy alongside the way in which as nicely. Meier has worn a pin with “43″ to each sport for the previous decade as a tribute to the jersey variety of her nephew Philip Lutzenkirchen, a good finish at Auburn who died in June 2014 in a automobile crash by which he was a passenger however not carrying a seat belt. The household began the Lutzie 43 Basis in his reminiscence, attempting to encourage individuals to make higher choices as drivers and mates.