New Women’s Basketball Head Coach Draws Strength from Community, Family

By Jamie Freedman

After three seasons as assistant director of the Colonials’ women’s basketball program, Mike Bozeman took over the reins as head coach of the team in June. A native Washingtonian with deep roots in the community, Bozeman helped lead the Colonials to back-to-back Sweet 16 appearances in 2007 and 2008. He succeeds Joe McKeown, who left GW this summer after a 19-year tenure to serve as head women’s coach at Northwestern University.

Bozeman has been a strong presence in Washington women’s basketball for nearly a decade. He gained wide¬spread acclaim as head basket¬ball coach at Bishop McNamara High School for six seasons, leading the team to national prominence. “When I took over as Bishop McNamara’s coach in 1999, the team was at the bottom of a very tough conference,” recalls Bozeman, an alumnus of the Forestville, Md., school. “By 2003-04, we were the number one high school women’s basketball program in the country.”

During the off season, Bozeman founded the popular NIKE Elite Summer League in 2001 and the DC NIKE Elite Girls’ Travel Team in 2002. “Jessica and Jazmine Adair, now stars of the GW women’s basketball team, played in my summer league when they were at Anacostia High School, and Yolanda Lavender, who just transferred to GW from Wake Forest, also came through my summer farm system,” he notes. In addition, Bozeman coached several of his Colonials players at Bishop McNamara, including freshman Tiana Myers and senior Antelia Parris, who has lived with his family for the past decade.
Both on and off the court, Bozeman is deeply committed to reaching out to area youth. After graduating from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, he served as a police office in Prince George’s County, Md., for eight years. “After I injured my back in a motorcycle accident and had to retire, I got a job as a peer mediation counselor for the Prince George’s County school system so that I could continue to reach young people,” he says.

In their spare time, Bozeman and his wife, Wendy, who have six daughters, adopted an economically challenged neighborhood in Oxen Hill, Md., where they coordinate activities like basketball tournaments, makeovers, and Bible study for residents. “We basically just let them know that we are there for them,” he states. “Community service is a huge priority for us. One of our dreams is to open a house for delinquent youth.”

Bozeman brings similar passion to his work at GW. “I had a hand in recruiting all the players on the team and have known many of them for years and worked intensively with them,” he says. “This is going to be a family affair.” As head coach, Bozeman is committed to empowering his players to maximize their potential. “We have a great blend of strong, mature veterans and energetic, talented newcomers from across the country, which I’m sure will lead to great success,” he states.

One of Bozeman’s first acts as Colonials head coach was to hire three assistant coaches: former Colonials’ star point guard Kristeena Alexander, B.A. ’00; 20-year coaching veteran Richard Moore, a former teammate of Bozeman from Fairleigh Dickinson; and Katie Rokus, who spent the past five seasons as assistant coach at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “Each of them brings immense energy and a mix of different specialties to our program, and I’m very excited to have them on board,” he says.

Bozeman says he is thrilled to follow in McKeown’s able footsteps as coach of the Colonials’ women’s basketball team. “I learned a lot from Joe and feel like this is a natural progression,” he says. “I’d like to think I had a pretty major hand in the team’s success these past three years. We made it to two straight Sweet 16s and have had 78 victories in the three seasons I’ve been here. We’ll keep the great tradition of GW basketball alive and hopefully even take the program to another level.”

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu