Liam McMahon ’20 and Rachel Wilson-King ’18

After six seasons as Women’s Soccer head coach, Michele Cornish resigned from her post to become the Athletic Director at Shattuck-St. Mary’s, a prep school in Faribault, Minn. Cornish garnered a 58- 33-14 (W-L-D) over her six years, nishing 7-6-4 in 2017. Her strongest season came in 2013, when the Scots went 13-5-1 and appeared in the MIAC Championship Game. The Scots last made the MIAC Playoffs in 2015.

At a meeting on Wednesday, Cornish informed the team of her decision to leave. After initially rebuf ng an approach from Shattuck-St. Mary’s a year ago, she chose to move on.

Molly Adams ’20 expressed gratitude to Cornish for the role she played in the team’s success while also looking to the future.

“We’re all happy for Michele and think she will do an amazing job as the AD at Shattuck-St. Mary’s. She’s had a very successful career as a coach. We’re con dent that her success will follow her to her next position. That being said, we are also excited for the upcoming season. We think we have a lot of potential. The team is de nitely going through a rebuilding phase, but we are excited to see how the program grows over the next few years,” Adams said.

Before Macalester, Cornish spent time as the head girl’s soccer coach at Shattuck-St. Mary’s for two years, which followed a 16-year stint as head coach at UNC- Asheville. While at Asheville, she led the Bulldogs to their rst ever NCAA Tournament appearance in 2006, and won Big South Coach of the Year honors twice. In 1991, three years before moving to Asheville, Cornish spent a season as an assistant coach at Macalester.

Cornish also had an extremely successful playing career at George Mason University, where she won a National Championship in 1985. The Athletic Department will conduct a national search for the next head coach. The job will be posted in the coming weeks, with the hope of lling the position by August 1. Cornish will stay on through the end of off-season practices, nishing this year’s recruiting process and easing the transition for the team.

As the search goes forward, Jaime Hasama ’18, who has worked to make the Leonard Center and Macalester Athletics a more diverse and inclusive place, hopes that the search will lead to a more diverse athletic department.

“I think this is a great opportunity for the athletic department to create a more diverse coaching staff,” Hasama said. “There is only one female coach of color and with Macalester’s commitment to diversity, this is extremely disappointing. How can we expect to recruit more student athletes of color if they look at the coaching staff and see mostly white people? There is a pool of female coaches of color, we just have yet to tap into [it].”