Lake Forest College Sports Information
December 10, 2007
Contact: Mike Wajerski, SID
Jackie Slaats Will Resign as Forester Basketball Coach
after 22 Seasons
Slaats will remain Lake Forest
College’s Athletic
Director and assume senior advisory role
LAKE FOREST, Ill. - Lake Forest College’s Jackie Slaats
announced to the Forester women’s basketball team Monday evening (December 10)
that the 2007-08 campaign will be her last as head coach. She will direct the
squad for the remainder of the season and a national search for her replacement
will begin in February. Slaats will continue as the College’s Athletic Director
and assume significant new responsibilities as Senior Advisor to the President.
The Foresters are 373-130 in Slaats’ 22nd year as head
coach and she entered the season ranked 20th in NCAA Division III history with
a .739 career winning percentage. Slaats has led the team to a 208-69 mark in
Midwest Conference play and league championships in 1992, 1994, 2000, 2001,
2002, and 2007. She has been named MWC Coach of the Year six times since 1995,
the first year of the award, and has also earned five Illinois Basketball
Coaches Association Coach of the Year honors. Before assuming athletic director
responsibilities in 1992, Slaats served as the College’s head volleyball coach
and posted a six-year record of 100-84.
Lake Forest currently owns an 8-1 record and was recently ranked 14th
in the nation by D3hoops.com and 15th in the USA Today/ESPN/WBCA Coaches Poll.
The early-season victories come on the heels of the most successful year in
team history. The 2006-07 squad won a school record 24 games against just three
losses, claimed the program’s sixth Midwest Conference championship, and
advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Foresters also rattled
off a program-best 18 consecutive victories late in the season and have now won
26 of their last 28 contests.
Slaats will take on various major assignments of
College-wide importance in her new role as Senior Advisor to the President. The
first of these will involve fundraising for the proposed expansion of the Sports Center
and renovation of the ice rink, which will provide exciting new recreation and
athletic facilities for students, faculty, and staff, as called for in the
College’s Five Year Plan. She will also advise College President Stephen D.
Schutt in a range of other areas, including campus and community relations,
alumni engagement, auxiliary business development, long-term planning, and
other special projects and strategic initiatives.
“This was obviously an extremely difficult and emotional
decision,” stated Slaats. “I can’t begin to describe how enjoyable and
rewarding coaching has been over the last 22 years. I also relish my role as
athletic director and look forward to the new opportunities as Senior Advisor
to the President. If there were more hours in a day, I would continue in all
three capacities, but unfortunately that is not the case. The growing demands
of my current positions, along with the exciting prospect of fundraising and
building new recreation and athletic facilities that will benefit the entire Lake Forest College community, made the timing right
for this decision. Although I’m sad about ending my coaching career, I’m
excited about working with President Schutt and the opportunities that lie
ahead for me professionally.”
“I know I speak for the entire College and all of Jackie’s
current and former players in expressing gratitude for her dedicated and
successful coaching for more than two decades,” begins Schutt. “Her
accomplishments as Athletic Director have been equally exceptional and the
skills she uses in that capacity will be valuable to the entire College as she
assumes this important advisory position.”
Slaats, a native of Cuba City,
Wisconsin, received her undergraduate degree
from Iowa State
University and a master’s degree in
education from the University
of Wisconsin –Whitewater.
As a student-athlete at Iowa
State, Slaats was a four
year varsity basketball letter winner and a three-time recipient of a Big 8
academic award.