JERSEY CITY—NJCU head women’s basketball coach Ashante Timoll, who will enter her sixth season at the helm of the Gothic Knights this season, was recently selected by the Black Coaches and Administrators Board of Directors to participate in the 2010 BCA “Achieving Coaching Excellence” (ACE) program.

Timoll successfully completed the prestigious four-day program in June in Indianapolis. The unique program for ethnic minority basketball coaches has been held since 2003 as a joint effort of the BCA, the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee (MOIC), the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics (CWA) and the NCAA Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

The program only accepts Division I, II and III head coaches and Division I assistant coaches through a competitive selection process and Timoll was the only Division III coach chosen among the 24 members of the 2010 program. She will be listed in the 2010-11 BCA Top Candidates list for basketball.

Recalling her experience at the program, Timoll said: “I walked in the door of the ACE program prepared to learn aspects of my profession I didn’t know. I graduated the program not only learning those things but just as important realized how much I actually did know. The time spent at the ACE program was both humbling and enlightening and I am grateful to have experienced it with an amazing group of mentors and inspirational coaches.”

In the first seven years of the program’s existence (2003-09), 90 coaches have completed the BCA program, and 27 have gone on to head coaching careers.

The ACE program is designed to enhance ethnic minority collegiate basketball coaches to become the next generation of collegiate head basketball coaches, by developing the areas of leadership, communications, campus relations, media training and program management.

The mission of the program is to promote the collegiate athletic coaching profession to ethnic minority basketball coaches while identifying, recruiting and retaining those candidates in collegiate coaching. The original concept of the program was introduced in 1994 to aid football coaches, before being adopted for women’s basketball and in 2007 for men’s basketball.

Among the program’s alumni include Itoro Coleman of Clemson University, Jamelle Elliott of the University of Cincinnati, Jolette Law of the University of Illinois, Tia Jackson at the University of Washington, and Penn State University coach Coquese Washington.