ATHLETIC STAFF BIOS

Athletic Director

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been eight years since Jerry Smith was tabbed to be the athletic director at AWC-until you realize what an incredibly successful eight-year run Matador Athletics has enjoyed under his direction. Smith is easily the most tenured member of the AWC Athletic staff, having spent over 40 years in community college athletics as a coach and administrator. A native of Red Oak, Oklahoma, Smith stayed home to play basketball and earn his Associate's degree at Eastern Oklahoma State College before earning both his Bachelor of Science degree and Master's in Education degree from Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Smith then returned to Talihina to begin his coaching career in the high school ranks for two years. Smith then headed to Durant High School in Durant, Oklahoma, for four seasons as the head boys' varsity basketball coach before becoming the head baseball coach and assistant basketball coach at Murray State College in Tishomingo, Oklahoma for one season. From there, Smith spent the next three decades of his life in several different capacities at EOSC. He was the Mountaineers' men's head basketball coach for nine seasons over two different coaching stints. During that time, Smith's teams won two conference championships and were Region II Tournament runners-up three times. Smith was not only head basketball coach but also longtime athletic director, Alumni Association Director, Vice President of Student Services and the Director of Development during his three-decade tenure at EOSC. Smith was also one of the top officials in the area during that time, officiating high school and college football games, and was even the coordinator of officials for the Oklahoma Secondary School Activity Association in the Southeast part of Oklahoma. Jerry is also well-respected among NJCAA officials, having served as the NJCAA Division II National Baseball Committee Chairman. Since arriving at AWC, Smith has helped increase the awareness of the Matador Athletic Association several times over throughout the Yuma community. Smith also begins his first year as the president of the Western States Football League after spending the last two years as the president of the Arizona Community College Athletic Conference. He also begins his 3rd year as the Region I's Women's Director (after 4 years as an assistant). Smith and his wife of 31 years, Mary, now happily make their home in Yuma, and have two children, Jimmy and Crystal, as well as three grandsons: Carter, Chase and Kyzer.

Sports Information Director/Matador Athletic Association Coordinator

Jim heads into his eighth year as a full-fledged  member of the Matador Athletics family as SID & MAA Coordinator, but also begins his 14th year behind the mic as the 'Voice of the Matadors' on the school's radio, TV, internet audio and video streamed game broadcasts.  Since November of 2005, Howell has been responsible for sending out press releases; coordinating press conferences and interviews; generating stories about Matador student-athletes, coaches and programs; and coordinating fundraising efforts for the athletic department and the Matador Athletic Association (the main organization that raises money for scholarships for current and future Matador student-athletes).  Matador Football fans have heard Howell bring them all of the sights and sounds of their team since 1999, and that includes the Matadors' appearances at the 2009 Mississippi Bowl, 2010 C.H.A.M.P.S. Heart of Texas Bowl, and the 2011 El Toro Bowl, which Howell (and color commentator Patrick Cunningham) broadcast not just for Matador Sports Network fans but also to the nation via the NJCAA website and IHigh.com as the nation's national championship of two-year college football.  For basketball fans, Howell has been there to bring them the national tournament appearances of AWC Women's Basketball in Salina, Kansas, in 2002 and AWC Men's Basketball from Hutchinson, Kansas, in 2006, and this past year, took listeners to Twin Falls, Idaho, for the Matador Men's appearance in the NJCAA District I Finals.  He’s also hosted ‘Matador Mania’, AWC’s TV coaches show on cable, since its inception in 2002. Jim came to the Matadors after spending one season as the inaugural radio/internet ‘voice’, PA announcer and Director of Public Relations for the Yuma Scorpions, Yuma’s independent minor league baseball team. Baseball fans also remember Jim as the Director of Media for the Yuma Bullfrogs for three years, where he was also their ‘voice’-as public address announcer at Desert Sun Stadium during home games, and play-by-play announcer during road radio broadcasts. Jim is no stranger to Yuma sports fans-having spent over eight years as Sports Director for KYMA-TV, the NBC affiliate for both Yuma and El Centro, California; and three years as the station’s News Director, Managing Editor, and Main News Anchor. Jim has been heard here on KBLU in several different capacities over the last decade, including morning and afternoon drive sports reports and commentaries, hosting AWC’s ‘Coaches Corner’, as well as providing play-by-play action for the Matadors, Scorpions, Bullfrogs, Yakult Swallows.  He was also the voice of ‘The High School Football Game of the Week’ for six seasons, and spent a year and a half spending Friday mornings on ‘Live N’ Local with Russ Clark’. Jim and his wife, AWC Communications Coordinator Alison Howell, reside in Yuma with the light of their lives-their son, Trevar.

Football - Head Coach

Ever since he first stepped foot onto the AWC campus back in the summer of 2008, Tom Minnick has fully embraced the storied lore of Matador Football’s great seasons of the 1960’s & 1970’s-including striking up a friendship with the head coach of those great teams, Ray Butcher. As he enters his 5th season at the helm of the program, Minnick has the current Matador Football program on par-and in some ways, ahead-of what those great teams of the past have accomplished. Minnick led his 2008 Matador team to a 5-5 record, and while he was disappointed about the record (even though it was a three-win upgrade from the year before), everyone else saw the incredible difference he and his coaches had made on the program. Since then, Minnick has brought the Matadors to the conversation about national championship contenders every year. They’ve won the WSFL title every year since (the first time ever that the Matador Football team has ever won 3 straight conference titles); been to postseason bowl games each year since (2009 Mississippi Bowl, 2010 C.H.A.M.P.S. Heart of Texas Bowl, 2011 El Toro Bowl); earned the #1 national ranking at different times during each of the last two seasons (first time since 1972); win 30 games in the last three seasons combined (most for any three-year span in the program’s history); bring the NJCAA’s Offensive Player of the Year Award to the program for the first time ever (Reggie Bullock won the award in 2010); and feature the WSFL’s Player of the Year three times in the last two years (Bullock (2010) & Damien Williams (2011) won the Offensive POY; Chris Young won the Defensive POY in 2011). Last December, Minnick’s team came within an eyelash of also bringing the program its first national championship since 1972, which he will try to make happen this December. The turnaround the program has made under Minnick wasn’t a surprise, since he came to Yuma after doing the same thing for Illinois’s Joliet Junior College. Minnick took a middling program and led it back to national prominence, leading the ‘06 Wolves to a 7-4 record, a Midwest Football Conference East Division title & a trip to the Graphic Edge Printing Bowl; then leading the ’07 team to 9 straight wins to finish out the season-including a win in the Graphic Edge Printing Bowl-to finish with a 10-2 record, a 2nd straight MFC East Division crown, and a #10 ranking in the final NJCAA Football Poll-their highest national ranking in 5 years. Minnick’s learning curve began as a starting quarterback at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois in 1986 under the man who would become his mentor, NJCAA Hall of Fame Coach Bob MacDougall. Minnick became MacDougall’s assistant at DuPage from 1990 until 1996 (helping lead them to bowl appearances all seven years and four bowl wins), then reunited with him in the same capacities at Joliet from 2000 until MacDougall’s retirement in ’06, where they won 2 national championships (’01 (as NJCAA Non-Scholarship Champs) & ’02 (overall champs), put together a 21-game winning streak over 2 years, and won two bowl games. Minnick has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business at the University of Missouri-Rolla. Tom and his wife, AWC Spirit Team Coach Tiffany Minnick, will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary this September, and have two daughters, 14-year-old Payton and 9-year-old Morgan.

Soccer - Head Coach

The years pass, and the old records continue to fall by the wayside for the Matador Soccer team as Kenny Dale commences with Year #8 at the helm of the history-making program. Graced with the honor of becoming the program’s first-ever full-time head soccer coach when he accepted the position in 2005, Dale has done nothing but set the bar higher every year for the squad. A soccer program that hadn’t enjoyed a winning season since 1999 suddenly became a perennial ACCAC powerhouse under Dale, who took the Matadors to the Region I Quarterfinals in his inaugural year of 2005, and has missed the playoffs just once since. Their six playoff appearances in the last seven years is easily the most postseason berths in that short a span in the history of AWC Soccer. They had never hosted playoff matches in back-to-back seasons before Dale arrived; they broke that trend by hosting in ’05 & ’06, and have now commenced the postseason at home the last three seasons as well. The program hadn’t even enjoyed the thrill of winning a playoff match prior to Dale, but in the last three years, they’ve won a total of four playoff games, getting to the Region I Finals in 2009, and in 2010, ending 23 years of frustration by not only winning their first-ever ACCAC Regular Season Title but also defeating Pima to hoist the Region I Championship plaque for the first time ever. Their berth in (and right to host) the NJCAA West District Finals was also a first for the program, as was their new high-water mark of 18 overall wins in a season. Last season, Dale led the Matadors to their best conference record ever of 16 wins, 2 losses and 1 tie. Dale was no stranger to ACCAC Soccer circles when he arrived to AWC, spending seven successful seasons as a coach at Cochise College in Douglas, Arizona. He’s also coached at Moorpark College, Pepperdine University and Simi Valley High School in his more than two decades of coaching. Dale has worked with college-level soccer athletes every season since 1988, and just began his third decade of college head coaching experience. Dale has also coached youth club teams, and this past spring became the director of coaching for the Western Arizona Soccer Academy in Yuma. He’s also worked for the Olympic Development Programs in California and Arizona. As a player, Dale was a college soccer star for both the University of Arizona and Kennesaw State University in Marietta, Georgia, as well as for the professional Tucson Amigos of the USISL. Dale earned a Bachelor of Arts in Education in 1988 and a Master of Arts in History in 1993 from the University of Arizona. He became a USSF ‘A’ licensed coach in 1993, completed the NSCAA Premier Diploma course in 2005, and completed the NSCAA Master Coach Program in 2010.

Volleyball - Head Coach

Getting to the edge of a Region I title every year might be pretty satisfying to most coaches. But Jason Smith isn’t ‘most coaches’, which is why he seems more determined than usual to get his Lady Matadors back in the winners’ circle as he heads into his third year of his second stint as the head coach of the Matador Volleyball program. Smith has certainly proven to every Matador fan what his teams can accomplish in several different instances. His first tour of AWC duty began in 2006, when he infused a strong burst of talent into an already-successful Matadors’ program and returned them to powerhouse status. His ‘06 Lady Mats’ squad won the school’s 7th straight Region I Volleyball title and earned a berth in the District A Finals against top-10 national power Salt Lake Community College. A year later, the 26-win Matadors won their first ACCAC Volleyball regular season title since 2004 and their 8th straight Region I Championship before again falling just short of an NJCAA Tournament berth in the District A Championship against the top team in the nation. He then moved back up to the four-year level (where he’d been prior to joining AWC in 2006), spending the next two seasons as the lead assistant for the volleyball team at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, helping lead the Lady Rebs to a 16-win season in 2008. By the end of 2009, Smith found he missed the community college kind of excitement, and jumped at the chance to return to Yuma when Karen Glover resigned to move to the four-year level herself in the spring of 2010. Since then, he’s brought two Lady Matador squads to the Region I Finals, and the 19 wins that the 2009 squad racked up were the most the program had enjoyed since Smith departed the first time. More importantly, he’s also continued the high academic standards that he set for the team originally, and all four of his Matador Volleyball squads have been named NJCAA All-Academic Teams, earning the honor by having a cumulative 3.0 grade point average or higher (with 2012 alums Nina Rogers & Kailey Smith earning NJCAA Academic All-American individual honors as well). Smith’s first stop on the four-year college level was at the University of Utah, where he was the volleyball team’s assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for three seasons. The Lady Utes won two Mountain West Conference titles during those three years-thanks to Smith’s nationally recognized recruiting classes. Smith came to Utah from NCAA Division II Ferris State, where as an assistant, he helped lead them to 2 20-win seasons and an NCAA Division II Tournament bid. Smith has also been an assistant at Iowa Western CC when they finished 10th in the NJCAA Tournament, and got his coaching start as an assistant and head coach at NAIA school Avila College. Smith’s playing days were spent in Iowa at Graceland University, where he was a 3-time all-region selection. Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in business and economics while at Graceland. Smith is also a newlywed, having tied the knot this past May with his longtime love, AWC Assistant Volleyball Coach Jennifer Lake.

Men's Basketball - Head Coach

After a year being the lead assistant to Kelly Green, Charles Harral finally gets a chance to lead his own team after spending several years learning from the best. Harral joined the Matadors’ coaching staff in August of 2010, bringing a powerful resume of championship-level experience with him. The first two coaches he learned under while a student-manager at Texas Tech University was none other than ten-year head man James Dickey (current head coach at the University of Houston) and NCAA Hall of Fame Coach Bobby Knight. While at TTU, Harral got his first taste of being part of a coaching staff that went to both the NCAA Tournament and the National Invitational Tournament Finals. Harral then added two more top coaches as references on his resume’ when he became a graduate assistant at the University of Texas-El Paso under (now Texas Tech University Head Coach) Billy Gillispie and (now University of Nebraska Head Coach) Doc Sadler. Harral was part of the largest loss-to-win turnaround in NCAA history in his first year with the Miners, and was also part of back-to-back Western Athletic Conference titles and NCAA Tournament berths. Harral then became one of the lead assistant coaches at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Harral not only recruited, coached practice and supervised the academics of the student-athletes, he also helped lead UAFS to a 33-win season and an NJCAA Championship. 2006 was the season that Harral first became a colleague of one of the members of the Green family, joining the staff of South Plains College in Levelland, Texas as assistant coach & recruiting coordinator under Steve Green, Kelly’s brother. That championship feeling returned for Harral in his 2nd year at SPC when the Texans won the NJCAA title in 2008. Prior to arriving at AWC, Harral spent two years back at the NCAA Division I level as an assistant at Weber State University in Utah, where his teams once again found the winner’s circle as back-to-back Big Sky Regular Season Champions and NIT Tournament participants.
Harral earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Exercise Sports Science in 2003 from Texas Tech University, and then completed his Master of Arts Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies at UTEP. Harral and his wife, Nicole, who also works at AWC in the Financial Aid Office, now make their home in Yuma.

Women's Basketball - Head Coach

The beginning of the decade not only meant the start of Patrick Cunningham’s 2nd decade at the helm of the Lady Matadors’ Women’s Basketball program, it also brought the return of the same incredible success that Cunningham’s teams enjoyed during the first part of Y2K. Granted, March of 2011 brought the Lady Matadors to their 3rd consecutive berth in the Region I Finals, but this time, Cunningham assembled a team that would set new standards for success before they were done with the second 30-win season in Lady Matadors’ history, 3rd ACCAC Regular Season title, the team’s first-ever victory in Coolidge against perennial powerhouse Central Arizona, and a final national ranking of 7th. Sustained success is nothing new to Cunningham, considering ever since he came to Yuma from Prescott in 1999 to build the AWC Women’s Basketball program from the ground up, the Matadors and postseason success have been anything but strangers. In Cunningham’s 12-year tenure, the Lady Matadors have now won the ACCAC Regular Season title three times, reached the playoffs eight times, the Region I Finals six times, and reached the NJCAA Tournament once in 2002, and during that time have never suffered through a losing season. The ‘02 season was the program’s high-water mark as they won the regular season title, Region I Championship, and posted their first-ever win in their inaugural appearance at the NJCAA Tournament in Salina, Kansas. The Lady Matadors’ program is also nationally recognized and respected, since they’ve risen as high as #2 in the NJCAA National Poll at one point. They also finished with a national ranking of 8th, 17th, and 11th over a three-year stretch from 2002 to 2004. During their 12 years of existence, the Matadors have produced 11 NJCAA All-American players, 5 Kodak WBCA All-Americans, 2 NJCAA All-Academic All-Americans and have sent 16 student-athletes to Division I programs. On the academic side, half of Cunningham’s last four teams have reached the status of NJCAA All-Academic Teams for a cumulative grade point average of more than 3.0. Cunningham got his start in coaching in the ACCAC as well as a longtime assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s basketball programs at Yavapai College in Prescott.
Cunningham is currently a Professor for the Business and Liberal Arts Division (BLAD) at AWC in addition to his coaching duties. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration and Economics from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and a Master's degree in Business Administration from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He’s also been a bank manager and financial administrator in the professional world. The light of Cunningham’s life is his son, Logan Escobar, who was born March 6, 2003, one day after a NJCAA Region I playoff victory.

Baseball - Head Coach

Yes, he is the newest member of the AWC Head Coaching fraternity, and the newest member of the baseball coaching staff, but no, Drew Keehn’s resume’ isn’t anything like a first-year coach’s resume’. Keehn has seen, played and coached on just about every level of baseball imaginable. In fact, Keehn got his collegiate coaching start under another current ACCAC Baseball coach, Central Arizona’s Jon Wente, as an assistant for Wente’s Odessa Junior College Wrangler Baseball team for the 2005 season. He then spent that summer as the pitching coach for the Brainard Blue Thunder, part of a league made up of college players with NCAA eligibility trying to get their start in professional baseball. He then rejoined Wente at Central Arizona from 2006 through 2008 as CAC’s recruiting coordinator and pitching coach. Keehn helped lead the Vaqueros to a pair of Region I Championships, and his final recruiting class eventually reached the 2008 NJCAA World Series Championship Game. Keehn got his first opportunity to coach on the NCAA Division I level during 2008 as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. During his three-year tenure at LMU, Keehn oversaw a Lions’ pitching staff that finished 3rd in the conference in earned run average and allowed the fewest walks, and the staff helped take the Lions to a 2nd-place finish in the WCC in 2009. Keehn has also coached on the high school level as head coach at Ironwood Ridge High School in Tucson, and coached the Liberal Bee Jays (like the Brainard Blue Thunder, a semi-professional baseball program) in 2006 & 2007.
Before Keehn moved up into coaching, Drew enjoyed a playing career that saw him make it all the way to the pros. Keehn was a standout pitcher at Central Arizona College from 1992-94, which got the attention of scouts for the Colorado Rockies, who drafted him in the ’93 Major League Baseball Draft. Keehn spent three years in the Rockies’ organization, pitching on the Rookie & Class A levels. A native of Wyandotte, Michigan, Keehn earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science at the University of Arizona, and a Master’s Degree in Education from the University of Phoenix. Keehn and his wife of two years, former 6-time NJCAA All-American and 4-time NAIA All-American track & cross-country star athlete Aybuke Kizilarslan, welcomed their first child into the world just after the start of the Matadors’ 2011 baseball season.

Softball - Head Coach

Nikki Bethurum enters her 3rd year leading the Lady Matador Softball program trying to bring the Lady Matadors yet another Region I Playoff berth… and to take them a step or two beyond that. Not too bad for someone who came to AWC just looking for a chance to prove she was ready to be a college head coach. Bethurum came to Yuma after a three-year stint as an assistant softball coach at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Longtime UAM Head Softball Coach Alvy Early entrusted Bethurum with a lot of extra coaching duties along with her duties as Recruiting Coordinator and pitching coach. Bethurum helped lead the Lady Cotton Blossoms to the Gulf South Conference West Championship and a berth in the NCAA Division II South Regional Tournament in her first season on the staff, and in 2009, she helped lead the Blossoms to a 38-16 overall mark, a 2nd-place finish in the GSC’s West Division, and her pitching staff featured the conference’s Pitcher of the Year. She brought that winning attitude to AWC, and even as an interim head coach that first year, she led the Lady Matadors to their first postseason win since 2006. Last season (after shedding the ‘interim’ title), she led them back to the postseason and back to the Region I Semifinals after upsetting top-ranked Yavapai in the opening round. Bethurum made the transition from player to coach very quickly. A 19-win pitcher as a senior for Downey High School and a member of four different traveling softball teams that all qualified for nationals, Bethurum was the first signee of the 2001 recruiting class for University of California-Riverside in the inland empire. After spending her freshman campaign as UCR’s top pitcher, the native of Downey, California, made the decision to head out of the Golden State for the first time by transferring to the University of Louisiana-Monroe. Bethurum became ULM’s top pitcher and hitter-despite fighting through shoulder problems throughout the season. Injuries forced Bethurum to move from the mound (and first base) to starting shortstop for her final two years as a player, and she was an All-Southland Conference Honorable Mention selection as a junior. Nikki also made the honor roll at ULM all three years she was there, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from ULM and graduating with honors in 2006. Bethurum earned her Master’s Degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock in 2009, and besides her coaching duties, is a Professor of Mathematics at AWC.

Tiffany Minnick

Spirit Team - Head Coach

The recent success and exponential growth of the AWC Spirit Program has been a direct result of the tireless work of Tiffany Minnick, who has spent the better part of three decades keeping cheer and dance teams in the mainstream of the two-year schools she’s been a part of. If you’d asked her in 2008 if she expected to be entering her third year as the head of the AWC Spirit Team in 2012, she would’ve likely replied with an emphatic ‘no’. That’s when she moved with her husband, Tom, from the Chicago area to AWC in the summer of 2008 so he could become the Matadors’ Head Football Coach. Tiffany was originally asked to just help out with both the AWC Spirit Squad and Dance Team in 2008-09, but her knowledge and expertise came to the forefront quickly, and she took over as Interim Head Coach early in the spring semester of ‘09. Since then, Minnick has worked tirelessly to offer opportunities for aspiring cheer and dance student-athletes, tripling the size of the rosters in less than four years. After cheering herself in high school and college, Minnick began her coaching career in 2003 as the Head Cheer Coach at Joliet Junior College in Joliet, Illinois. It was a tough but invaluable experience, since she was literally starting the program over again from scratch. The eight-girl squad Minnick started with in the first season eventually grew to a 26-person contingent by the time she left five years later. During her last three years at JJC, she led them to a pair of cheerleading championships against not just two-year but four-year college, as well as a 2nd-place finish in 2008 solely against junior colleges. During her playing days, Minnick cheered for two years at the College of DuPage in Illinois while earning her Associate of Arts Degree in Anthropology, then continued her education at Illinois State University, earning her Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Sciences from ISU. The former Tiffany Malone also met her future husband while at DuPage, and the Minnicks have two children: 14-year-old Payton and 9-year-old Morgan. The Minnicks will also celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary this year.

Athletic Secretary

As the rosters of student-athletes, coaches and staff rotate in the Matador Athletics family annually, one constant has remained over the past 15 years: the steady, consistent (and many times, behind-the-scenes) performance of Cindy Evans. But her tenure in athletics is only half the story for Evans, since she just finished celebrating 30 years at Arizona Western College. You could find Evans at the AWC Bookstore in the old AWC Student Union when she first began as a campus employee in 1981. Evans moved to the school’s Registration Office after that before taking over as Athletic Secretary in 1997. During her tenure in the athletic office, Evans has seen 10 different Matador Athletic teams reach the NJCAA Tournament; has made trips with the AWC Football team to Nassau, New York for the Nassau Bowl in '97, and to Biloxi, Mississippi for the Mississippi Bowl in 2009; and this past year, saw her first national championship football game at the 2011 El Toro Bowl. Evans has worked for four different athletic directors while at AWC, and continues to be respected for keeping the Matador Athletic offices running smoothly. Evans is married to Brent, who just recently retired after a long, successful career as middle school teacher at Castle Dome Middle School, and dotes on her two daughters, Megan and Jennifer, and her five granddaughters.