Notre Dame Fighting Irish Slappy Awards: Coach of the Year

Notre Dame Fighting Irish athletic teams had a good year. Because of this, there are many candidates for Coach of the Year for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish fans are pretty spoiled. One of the best parts about being a Notre Dame fan is the emphasis that the University puts on sports, while also being a great academic institution.

Part of having great sports teams with great student-athletes is having great coaching. Coaches play a major role in the molding of these individuals. Coaching goes beyond the playing field and these coaches all exemplify that.

The latest Slappy Award presents us with one of the toughest choices every year: who was the best coach?

Multiple playoff and tournament appearances across the board show a year of success in South Bend. Even some of the lesser viewed sports brought plenty of memorable moments. In short, Notre Dame teams had some great accomplishments this past academic year.

Even teams that didn’t bring a title home surpassed expectations and exciting and memorable games that left an impression on not just Irish fans, but college sports fans in general.

The nominees for best coach for the 2018-2019 academic season are:

Brian Kelly, Football
Muffet McGraw, Women’s Basketball
Gia Kvaratskhelia, Fencing
Kevin Corrigan, Men’s Lacrosse

I do want to throw out an honorable mention to Deanna Gumpf, who guided Notre Dame softball to a 37-18 record that included 4 top 25 wins and their 21st consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.

Now that I have introduced the nominees, let’s take a deeper look at the things their teams accomplished this past season.