Gary Grant Position: Assistant Coach Years at Miami: Second Season

Gary Grant enters his second season as an assistant coach for the RedHawks after joining the program in July of 2009. He brings 18 years of coaching experience at the club, high school and collegiate levels to the Miami soccer staff and helped guide the 'Hawks to the Mid-American Conference Tournament title game in his first year back in Oxford.

"We're very excited to have Gary back in the program," head coach Bobby Kramig said. "He served as our graduate assistant on our (men's) 1994 championship team. He brings a tremendous amount of experience and a great wealth of soccer knowledge to our program. He has a wonderful perspective on intercollegiate athletics and we're very happy to have him back."

Since 1993, Grant has coached both boys and girls club soccer teams in Texas, Oregon and Ohio, including the Cincinnati Classics Soccer Club. He has directed his teams to tournament championships in Oregon, Washington and Nevada, while also conducting youth soccer camps with players from the Dallas Sidekicks, a former franchise in the Major Indoor Soccer League.

Grant served on the Ohio South ODP State staff for the 1995 girls team, which will be representing Region II in the ODP National Championships in the spring of 2011 after winning the Region II Qualifier.

In addition to coaching club teams, Grant has coached both boys and girls at the high school level since 1997. While teaching high school mathematics, he has coached at four high schools in Texas and Oregon, including his most-recent post at Sunset High School in Portland where he was the boys varsity soccer coach. Along with coaching, Grant has helped fundraising efforts, community involvement and student-athlete participation in community service.

Grant served as Miami's graduate assistant for men's soccer from 1992-94 under the direction of Kramig, while earning his master's degree at Miami in sports studies (sports psychology concentration). As a grad assistant, he worked with the team on and off the field, some of which included helping individuals establish goals and achieve them.

"The job's a bit of shock to me because I didn't anticipate coming back to coach 15 years after I got my master's degree," Grant said upon his hire, "but having come back, it brought back a lot of fond memories and I'm really looking forward to the challenge."

A native of Seattle, Grant earned his bachelor's degree in psychology from Portland State University in 1992 and has taught high school math for the last 14 years. He is a member of the U.S. Soccer Federation and the National Soccer Coaches Association of America and has his B License and National Coaching Diploma from those respective organizations.

Grant is married to his wife, Mickie.