Courtney Boyd named NAIA Women's Basketball National Coach of the Year

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Continuing the history-making 2022-23 Clarke University women's basketball season, Pride head coach Courtney Boyd was named the NAIA National Coach of the Year, the NAIA announced on Tuesday morning.

Boyd led the Pride to Clarke University's first ever National Championship, winning the 2023 NAIA Tournament with a six-game run that saw CU defeat two No. 1 seeds, including the defending National Champion in Thomas More University in the National Championship game.

With that championship, Boyd became just the ninth woman to be the head coach of an NAIA Women's Basketball National Champion and the 13th overall time a woman has led a champion in the 48-year history of the NAIA Basketball Championship.

Also during their Championship run, the Pride were able to earn each of their victories in the last four rounds starting at the final site in Sioux City, Iowa by double-digits while limiting five of the six teams under 70 points in each game throughout the entire tournament.

The Pride finished this season with a program-best 33-4 overall record to move Boyd's career record at Clarke to 155-42 as she has improved the team's win total in each of the six seasons that she has been the woman in charge at Clarke, excluding the 2020-21 season that saw CU play in less games than normal due to COVID-19 restrictions.

During her six seasons, Boyd has coached the top-two leading scorers in program history in Makenna Haase and new leader Tina Ubl, the all-time leader in assists in Skylar Culbertson, eight 1,000-point scorers, 28 All-Heart selections, and eight NAIA All-America selections. 

This is the first ever National Coach of the Year honor given to a head coach at Clarke University after Boyd was named the Heart of America Coach of the Year following Clarke's 2021-22 season that saw the Pride earn their first ever Conference Regular Season title while they also earned a win in the Heart Tournament, their second conference tournament championship.

Clarke will be honoring the 2023 NAIA National Champion Pride women's basketball team today at 3:30 p.m. CT in the Robert and Ruth Kehl Center where they will also raise the NAIA Championship Banner to the rafters of the Kehl Center.