Seasoned Vet Elzy Ready to Lead UK Women's Basketball
There’s being thrown into the fire. Then, there’s taking a Division I basketball head coaching job less than two weeks before the season starts.
Kyra Elzy will take over the Kentucky women’s basketball program, just 12 days before the 2020-21 season begins. It’s a job she has always thought about and is excited to have, even if it came about due to the retirement of her mentor Matthew Mitchell due to his ongoing health battle.
“I always dreamed of taking over for Coach Mitchell as he rode off into the sunset. I never quite imagined it like this,” Elzy said. “That’s the funny thing about life – it never goes quite like planned.”
While that may seem like a huge undertaking, taking over such a successful program, Elzy knows she is ready.
“I am truly humbled and honored. I am ready to take ownership that has been placed upon me,” Elzy said. “I am ready to embrace this moment. I am a seasoned vet in the SEC. Twelve years of coaching experience, five years of playing in arguably the best conference in the country. I am a two-time national champion, an SEC champion as a player and as a coach. I have recruited at the highest level at several institutions.”
Elzy knows that she is lucky to be inheriting a team that’s ranked 11th in the country in the preseason and she’s ready to embrace the pressure that goes with that.
“It has not totally hit me yet but I do realize that I am taking over a top team in the country and I’m just going to use it as positivity,” Elzy said. “Not every head coach gets to walk into a team that has been successful.”
Elzy says she has been given advice by her mentors and colleagues, some of which is very simple.
“The best advice that I have received thus far – if all else fails, put the ball in Rhyne Howard’s hands and let her do what she does best,” Elzy said.
When asked what her college coach, Pat Summitt, would tell her, Elzy knew exactly what that would be.
“Remain poised, remain confident but prepare,” Elzy said. “Not only have yourself prepared but have your team prepared so we know what we’re doing and we’re confident in it. That’s what Coach Summitt would tell me.”
A standout player at Oldham County High School in LaGrange, Kentucky, Elzy played her college basketball for Summitt at Tennessee. There, Elzy would be a four-year letter winner and a two-time national champion (1997 and 1998).
As an assistant coach, Elzy spent time at Western Kentucky and Kansas before coming to Kentucky from 2008-2012. That 2011-12 UK team won the SEC regular season championship.
Elzy then left the UK program to go back to her alma mater from 2012-2016. But she returned to Kentucky, this time as the associate head coach, in 2016 and has been with the Cats ever since. All of that has made her ready to take over the UK program, according to Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart.
“She’s got the resume that allows us to have confidence in knowing that she can begin this process and get to know our program a little more from a different spot,” Barnhart said. “She’s been a part of, in Matthew’s absence, she’s been leading our program and has done a wonderful job steadying the waters for our program as we go through these times of all of the difficult uncertainties. She’s been wonderful guiding us through all of those pieces.”
Elzy’s turnaround is a quick one, with the Cats scheduled to start the season on November 25. Her preparation as a player and as an assistant coach has her ready to conquer that scenario and to lead the program into the future.
