Katie Galloway Burrows left her mark on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball program during her playing career. Now she will try to do the same from the bench.
Coach Wes Moore has hired Burrows as an assistant coach, replacing Amanda Eaton-Burge who is moving back to West Virginia to be closer to her family.
Burrows, who has coached the girls team at Ringgold High School for the past three years, is the first former Lady Mocs player to come back and coach alongside Moore.
"I actually had talked to her in the past about this position and the timing just hadn't been right," Moore said Wednesday. "This time it just seemed to fall into place, and I'm excited about having one of our former players (on the staff)."
Burrows, who married Nicholas Burrows last September, said Moore's most recent offer came at the right time.
"I felt like it was time to move on and maybe try to do something new and try to learn how to do things at the next level," she said. "Working under a guy like Coach Moore, he's good at what he does and he taught me a lot of what I know, so I'm looking forward to learning more and teaching other girls about it."
Burrows, a point guard, was part of a remarkable four-season stretch (2000-04) at UTC during which the Lady Mocs won both the Southern Conference regular-season and tournament titles each season.
The biggest shot of her career came in the biggest win in Lady Mocs history. She hit an improbable 30-foot 3-pointer with the shot clock winding down that sparked a 16-5 run in UTC's 74-69 upset of Rutgers in the first round of the 2004 NCAA tournament.
"There's no doubt in my mind, we wouldn't have beaten Rutgers without Katie," Moore said.
One of the things Moore hopes his players get from Burrows is her competitive spirit, an attribute that some of his recent teams have lacked. Burrows was one of the 10 players on the Decade of Dominance team, which was celebrated during the 2008-09 season, Moore's 10th at UTC.
"Katie was blessed with some talent, but she also just worked really hard and in a lot of ways was an overachiever, and you hope that she can pass that toughness and that passion for the game down to these players," Moore said. "I think we need that."
Eaton-Burge spent two seasons at UTC and was the only coach that remained with the Lady Mocs when Moore left briefly for East Carolina. In January her sister Lauren died and Eaton-Burge said she needed to step away from coaching for a little while to be close to home.
"It was a decision that my husband (Thomas) and I had to make for us, and we felt like it was the right decision at this point in time," Eaton-Burge said. "I had an amazing experience (at UTC) and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world."