Maine Maritime Academy has named its first head coach for women’s wrestling.
Ashley Keenan, a Colorado Springs native, will join the Mariners in Castine on July 10, the academy announced Wednesday.
It will be the first collegiate women’s wrestling team in Maine. The program will remain a club sport for the 2023-2024 season, and then will move into NCAA competition for the 2024-2025 school year.
“Coach Keenan’s enthusiasm for the sport of women’s wrestling as well as her desire to lead a start-up program make her the ideal first Women’s Wrestling Coach here at Maine Maritime Academy,” Associate Director of Athletics Tricia Carver said. “I could not be more excited to watch the program grow under her leadership”
Keenan has a long wrestling career. She will come off a stint as assistant women’s wrestling coach at Elmira College in New York, where her team posted two 15th place finishes in the National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships, as well as had nine qualifiers to the collegiate championships and one All-American.
Before that she was assistant coach at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction and wrestled for the Mavericks’ inaugural women’s squad in 2018. Keenan also wrestled for the University of Regina from 2012 to 2018, when the program was cut.
“I am beyond excited to build and grow the program to become an elite team on campus and to compete amongst the other top women’s programs in the nation,” Keenan said Wednesday. “I hope to give dedicated student-athletes the opportunity to continue their academic careers and their athletic dreams. … I am ready to embrace this experience and create history at Maine Maritime Academy.”
Keenan has a bachelor’s degree in fitness and health promotion from Colorado Mesa University and is earning her master’s in general management from Elmira College.
