Each current Sun Devil head coach is asked in mid-June to pick one … just one … current Sun Devil Coach of the Year in honor of Frank Kush.
The award — presented around the anniversary of Coach Kush’s passing (June 22, 2017) — is one way for each coach to recognize a peer that impressed them the most. The rules and guidelines are… well, none.
They can vote for someone who earned Pac-12 Coach of the Year honors, a coach who made an impression in their first year, or simply the nicest coach in the building. Once tallied, one coach earns what one would consider the ultimate show of respect, an award from their peers in the 26-sport department.
This year’s winner is a head coach of a sport that took his team to the brink of a NCAA title, but also decided he wanted to be an alumni of the university.
Men’s golf head coach Matt Thurmond will enter his seventh season in 2022-23 as the current Frank Kush Award winner. He will also enter the year as an ASU graduate after earning his master’s degree, and has led ASU to its best back-to-back NCAA finishes in over 30 years. Want more? His sixth assistant coach in his career earned a Division I head coach job. Three of the other 11 coaches in the Pac-12 were assistants under Thurmond.
Spending more than two decades as a college golf coach made Matt Thurmond want to earn a graduate degree. He expected to return to school, but always wondered when it would happen. https://t.co/YJIhsXf6fT #tbirdgrad #tbirdlife pic.twitter.com/h5O837kNhX
— Thunderbird School of Global Management (@Thunderbird) May 31, 2022
“What an honor it is, on multiple levels, to win this award,” notes Thurmond, who was hired on July 25, 2016. “First, to be selected by my fellow Sun Devil coaches who fully understand all it takes to have successful season. I thank them for selecting me from among a group of deserving coaches. Second, to have my name listed next to Frank Kush in anything is a huge honor. When I think of Coach Kush I think of the sustained excellence on the field, but I mostly think of the lasting impact he had on this university, community and the players he coached. Sustained excellence and a lasting impact is greatness, and it is the hope of any coach at ASU to accomplish even a little of what Coach Kush accomplished in those areas.”
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