The Bowdoin College Athletic Department in Maine, United States, has named India-born Sacha Santimano as the head coach of their women's basketball team. Adrienne Shibles, who took over at Dartmouth College last month, will be replaced by her.
Santimano previously served as Head Women's Basketball Coach and Assistant Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Academic Services at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts.
Excited about her new job profile, Santimano said, “I want to thank Tim Ryan, President Rose, and the search committee for this incredible opportunity,” said Santimano. “I am humbled to be joining the Bowdoin community and honored to take on such a successful program from Coach Shibles. I am ready and excited to go to work alongside our Polar Bear women’s basketball family.”
Santimano, the 2019-20 New England Collegiate Conference Coach of the Year, spent ten years at Eastern Nazarene, where she led the Lions to a 138-107 record, including a 49-14 record over the last three seasons. During her tenure, her ENC teams made the postseason eight times, and more than a dozen of her athletes earned All-Conference honours. She was also named the Commonwealth Coast Conference Coach of the Year in her first season as Lions head coach in 2011-12.
“I am excited to welcome Sacha as our head coach of women’s basketball at Bowdoin,” said Ashmead White Director of Athletics Tim Ryan. “Sacha has demonstrated an exceptional ability to position members of her program for success both on and off the court, and her drive to excel and unwavering commitment to enhancing the academic, athletic and overall experience of her players will be a wonderful addition to the Bowdoin community.”
Santimano, a 2003 Dakota State University (S.D.) graduate, also served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves and has coached at several universities across the country, including the University of St. Mary's (Kan.), the University of the Cumberlands (Ky.), and Asbury University (Ky.). She got her first head job as the interim head coach at Allen Community College (Kan.) in 2010, before landing at Eastern Nazarene in 2011.
Santimano holds a Master's Degree in Teaching from the University of the Cumberlands and has served as the Department Chair for the Sport Management programme, as well as overseeing the Student Athlete Advisory Committee and chairing the Retention Task Force and Racial & Social Justice Committees. She is also an active member of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, having presented as part of the ASPIRE programme at the association's annual convention last spring.
After spending her formative years in Lansing, Kansas, Santimano takes over a programme that has consistently been among the best in Division III over the last 20 years, but especially over the last three seasons, when the Polar Bears went 87-7, including NCAA title game appearances in 2018 and 2019.
Bowdoin won the NESCAC Championship in 2020 and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen before the NCAA Championship was cancelled last March, and it will not compete in 2020-21 due to COVID-19. She will be the program's seventh head coach in its 46-year history, and only the fourth since 1983.
