Ben Coomes has been a cog in the recruiting efforts of the Southeast Missouri women’s basketball program for the past two seasons.
Coomes serves as the Redhawks’ recruiting coordinator and also handles scheduling. He works primarily with the Redhawks’ offense, particularly the post players, and splits academic monitoring duties with the rest of the assistant coaches.
Southeast battled through injuries on its frontcourt during the 2012-13 season, but saw Patricia Mack emerge as a force on the glass. Mack, who was two years removed from a season-ending knee injury, finished fourth in the Ohio Valley Conference with 9.3 rebounds per game. Mack led the team in rebounding in 21 of Southeast’s 29 games. She also grabbed 10 or more rebounds 14 times after doing so only seven times in her career prior to that season.
In his first year at Southeast, the Redhawks got a career season from forward Brittany Harriel. Harriel averaged 10.2 points and 6.9 rebounds per game while shooting 46.0 percent from the field, all of which represented career highs.
Coomes has over 10 years of experience in college basketball in varying capacities at four different schools. Before arriving at Southeast, he spent two seasons as the video coordinator at Purdue where he coordinated film exchange and served a valuable role breaking down game film for scouting purposes. He also produced highlight and motivational videos along with creating video for individual player development while maintaining the Boilermakers’ video archives.
Prior to his stint in West Lafayette, Ind., Coomes served as an assistant coach at Belmont during the 2007-08 season. He was also an assistant coach and the recruiting coordinator at Lambuth for the 2006-07 campaign, where he helped lead the Eagles to their first NAIA National Championship in any sport. That title came two seasons after Lambuth won only nine games in 2004-05. Standouts Reggie Maddox (the NAIA Tournament MVP) and Tara Robinson also went on from Lambuth to play professionally overseas.
Before breaking into coaching, Coomes served as the director of basketball operations at Evansville from 2004 to 2006. That was his first postgraduate position after he spent all four years of his undergraduate as a manager for the Indiana women’s basketball team. He was the head manager at IU for his last two years.
Coomes graduated with a bachelor's in sport communications from Indiana in 2004.
