Leah Killen resigns as women's tennis coach

After spending two seasons as the coach of the Southeast Missouri State women's tennis team, Leah Killen resigned from her position.

Killen submitted her letter of resignation to interim athletic director Brady Barke on Oct. 5.

Barke said he could not comment on the reasons Killen gave in her resignation letter, but said the department is now moving forward in the search for her replacement.

Killen was hired by former athletic director Mark Alnutt in 2013 and compiled an overall record of 11-33 during her time as the team's coach and never finished higher than eighth in the Ohio Valley Conference. Southeast went 3-7 in OVC play during Killen's first season and gained its only two wins of the season last year in conference play, finishing 2-20 overall.

"This was her third season and had an opportunity where most of the players on the team had been hers," Barke said. "Certainly it's the time where you kind of expect or hope that a new coach is able to begin to move on with their program, with their recruits and their type of play, so I think it was somewhat of a surprise in terms of the timing of things and whatnot."

Killen took over a program that had not advanced to the OVC Tournament since 2007 and has yet to win an OVC Championship of any sort. The closest Southeast had gotten to winning a conference championship was in 1993 when the team finished third in the standings.

Currently without a coach, the athletic department has met with the team and has made an outline for a practice and workout schedule for the remainder of the offseason until a new coach is in place.

Barke said he and the staff will continue to provide as much oversight as possible, but mentioned that there isn't really anyone on the staff who has experience coaching a tennis team.

"So we're going to really try to continue just to make practice times and some structure for them," Barke said. "Then, of course we have very qualified strength and conditioning coaches that will be able to continue to conduct those workouts for them as they have in the past until we can get someone in here."

The athletic department posted the opening of the position last week and has the job listing on the NCAA's website.

"Generally there are other places you can post positions, whether that happens to be in minority coaching publications, those types of things to try and get as diverse of a candidate pool as you can," Barke said. "Then of course we post it on our website and have it locally as well."

Barke will work with senior associate director of athletics/senior woman administrator Cindy Gannon in the upcoming weeks to put a search committee together to review applicants and to also do searches of their own.

"With most searches, you kind of have to do a little bit of your own leg work and try and reach out to some individuals and see if they happen to know of anyone that might be of interest to speak with," Barke said. "You kind of do that as much as you can as well just to make sure that you're not just relying on someone spotting the posting in a publication somewhere, that you're able to try and find the people that are possibly a good fit for the position and be able to talk to them about what the position has to offer and be able to recruit candidates that way as well."

Barke said he does not have an exact set time for when he wants the position to be filled, but hopes the position can be filled going into the spring semester when the team's regular season begins.

Barke wants to make sure he and the rest of the search committee conduct themselves at a pace to where they can find the right candidate.

"It's a position we've had some turnover in recent years and really want to make sure we identify the right candidate for the position and hopefully find one that will be able to have some stability and be able to have for several years, and ultimately elevate the success of that program," Barke said.