Steve Thompson Voted HERO Sports National Coach of the Year

BELLVUE, Wash. – Third-year Eureka College women's basketball head coach Steve Thompson has been voted D3 Women's Basketball Coach of the Year by HERO Sports, according to an online fan vote conducted by the online publication. HERO Sports is dedicated to the coverage of every collegiate athletics department for men and women in all sports and divisions.

Thompson, who also serves as the Eureka College Director of Athletics, was one of 10 NCAA Division III women's basketball head coaches nominated by HERO Sports for the award. Online voting ran from Monday through Thursday. Nearly 3,000 votes were cast and Thompson received more than a third of the total responses.

The 2016-17 St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Year, Thompson guided the Red Devils to a sweep of the SLIAC regular season and tournament titles and the program's first-ever bid to the NCAA Tournament. Eureka finished the campaign with a 20-8 record, the fourth season with 20 wins or more in the 42-year history of the program.

EC also set single-season program records with 2,072 points, 234 3-pointers, 498 assists and 103 blocked shots.

HERO Sports was initially founded to provide an objective ranking system for collegiate soccer. By 2014, the content platform was expanded for coverage of every collegiate athletics department for men and women in all sports and divisions. HERO Sports produced approximately 2,000 original articles in 2015.