Prairie View coach agrees to 4-year contract

Prior to Cooper-Dyke's arrival on campus, the Lady Panthers had never had a winning season.

Prairie View A&M has reached an agreement on a four-year contract with women’s basketball coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke. “Prairie View is where we want her,” athletic director Fred Washington said Wednesday. Cooper’s original four-year contract expired at the end of last season.

Cooper, a former star with the now-defunct Houston Comets, has led the Lady Panthers to the NCAA Tournament in two of the last three seasons and one trip to the Women's NIT. During that span, Prairie View has won three consecutive Southwestern Athletic Conference regular-season titles and two postseason conference tournament titles.

“We hadn’t seen very much success in women’s basketball,” Washington said. “We had never approached 20 wins, which we had the last two years, and never seen championship-caliber performances or the level of interest in women’s basketball from our fans or potential student-athletes that we have now.”

Washington said Prairie View A&M has reworked the contract of football coach Henry Frazier III and signed men’s basketball Byron Rimm II to a new four-year contract. It's great keeping a coach who can coach anywhere."

PVAMU women’s basketball players Gaati Werema, Candice Thomas and Dominique Smith were selected by USA Athletes International to represent the United States in the 2009 Vienna Basketball Tournament in Vienna, Austria. The Lady Panthers trio are competing abroad this summer from May 28th – June 6. This is a first for PVAMU and the SWAC and shows the superb influence of Coach Cooper-Dyke on HBCU basketball on the global stage.

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Longtime Hoya Niki Reid Geckeler Named Head Coach at Howard University

Washington, D.C. - The Georgetown University women's basketball coaching staff will look a little bit different in 2008-09. Former Hoya standout athlete and 10-year assistant coach Niki Reid Geckeler has recently been named the head coach at Howard University.

Reid Geckeler spent a total of 10 years on the Blue and Gray sidelines, the last four under Terri Williams-Flournoy, after spending the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons as an associate head coach at Fordham.

"Niki has been an important part of the Georgetown family for a long time and she will be missed," said Coach Williams-Flournoy. "With that said, she has worked hard and certainly deserves her first head coaching opportunity. Howard is getting a great coach."

Reid Geckeler served seven seasons with the Hoyas as an assistant coach under Pat Knapp, as the team's recruiting coordinator and academic advisor. During her first go-round at Georgetown Reid Geckeler focused on the team's defensive play and guard coach, helping the Hoyas to three WNIT appearances, while having four guards earn postseason honors in the BIG EAST. She also had eight players earn All-BIG EAST All-Academic accolades.

As a player, Reid Geckeler was tri-captain of Georgetown's 1992-93 team that advanced to the "Sweet 16" of the NCAA Tournament and finished the season with a 23-7 record and a Top-25 ranking. The Hoyas were 15-3 in the BIG EAST to win the regular-season conference championship. Reid Geckeler was a four-year starter at point guard and upon graduating in 1993 with a degree in psychology, she left Georgetown as the school's leader in assists and three-point field goal percentage.

During her four seasons as a student-athlete, Reid Geckeler was honored with the Coaches' Award as the team's Most Valuable Player in the 1991-92 season, was the recipient of the team's Best Defensive Player award for the 1990-91 campaign and was the winner of the Hustle Award in both 1989-90 and 1990-91.