Kamie Ethridge gets three-year extension as WSU women’s basketball coach

After guiding the Washington State Cougars women’s basketball team to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in nearly three decades last year, head coach Kamie Ethridge has agreed to stick around a while longer. The school announced a three year extension to her contract today, which will now run through the 2026-2027 season.

“I sincerely appreciate the opportunity Director of Athletics Pat Chun and President Kirk Schulz have afforded me to continue to represent this tremendous university as head coach of Washington State’s women’s basketball program,” said Ethridge in a release from the school. “I am extremely proud of the historic season we just completed and am proud to be representing Coug Nation as we head into the future. I love it here. I love what it means to be a Coug.”

Her extension comes a season after the Cougs notched their first ever appearance in the AP Top 25 (the last Power Five program to do so) and beat two top ten teams at home, the UCLA Bruins and eventual national runners up, the Arizona Wildcats. Ethridge has also picked it up on the recruiting front, most notably landing the Leger-Walker sisters, including Charlisse, who was named the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year for the 2020-2021 season.

Needless to say, this is incredibly well deserved. Ethridge’s teams are not only successful on the court but off it, posting the highest GPA in team history last year. Pullman has been a bit of a wasteland when it comes to women’s basketball success ever since the school started fielding a Pac-10 team in the 1980s. That it took until this year for the team to be ranked speaks volumes about the level of Ethridge and her staff’s accomplishment.

Ethridge’s rebuild was incredibly quick and Chun is putting his faith in her that the sustained success will arrive at a similar speed.