(Interesting Notes about Patriot athletics)

-      Former Francis Marion University head men’s basketball coach Ed Conroy has joined the University of Tennessee staff as director of basketball operations. Last season, he held the same position at the University of Tulsa on the staff of head coach Buzz Peterson. After the Golden Hurricane won the NIT championship, Peterson was hired by Tennessee, and he asked Conroy and two other assistants to relocate to Knoxville. Conroy posted a 41-40 record in three seasons (1997-2000) on the Patriot bench.

 

-      Former Francis Marion women’s basketball head coach Trudi Lacey has been named an assistant coach for the WNBA’s Charlotte Sting, joining the staff of head coach Anne Donovan. Lacey directed the FMU program for two seasons (1986-88) and led the Patriots to a 53-12 mark and the 1987 NAIA District Six championship. She left FMU to take the head coaching position at the University of South Florida, where she became the school’s all-time winningest coach in only eight seasons. She was an assistant at the University of Maryland for one year, before taking a position with USA Basketball, where she was most recently the assistant director of women’s programs.

 

-      Former FMU women’s basketball assistant coach Jill Jameson was recently named assistant coach at Marquette University. Jameson was an assistant under head coach Wes Moore at Francis Marion during the 1997-98 campaign. The Patriots posted a 30-3 mark that season and reached the NCAA Division II Final Four. Jameson has been an assistant on Moore’s staff at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for the past three seasons.

 

-      Two FMU student-athletes, women’s soccer player Sabina Sapienza of Shoreham, N.Y., and women’s softball pitcher Janet Rice of Topeka, Kan., were recently inducted into Phi Kappa Phi honor society. Phi Kappa Phi is the oldest (founded in 1897) and most selective multi-disciplinary honor society dedicated to the promotion of academic excellence, and annually awards national fellowships for graduate and international study and internships. Invitations for induction are extended only to students in the top 10 percent of the senior class or five percent of the junior class, with a minimum grade point average of 3.5. Outstanding graduate students, faculty, alumni and professional staff members are also eligible. Phi Kappa Phi currently has chapters on the campuses of 282 colleges and universities.

 

-      Jerry Pruitt, the women’s volleyball head coach at FMU from 1996 to 1998, has resigned as head coach at Division I Radford University to pursue other opportunities. When he came to Florence, he quickly rebuilt the Patriot program. He inherited a squad that had finished last in the Peach Belt Conference in 1995. In his first year, he posted a 28-2 mark and won the PBC regular season title. He compiled an 87-12 record on the Patriot bench and led the team to the 1998 NCAA Division II national tournament. He encountered similar success at Radford, guiding the Highlanders to a two-year mark of 47-18, two Big South Conference regular-season titles, and an appearance in the NCAA tournament this past fall.