June 1, 2012
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Former University of Notre Dame women’s tennis assistant coach Julia Scaringe-Sell has been hired as the head coach at LSU as announced by the school on Friday. She spent three years assisting the Irish from 2008-11, helping guide the team to back-to-back NCAA Championship semifinal appearances.
“It’s great to have Julia back in college tennis,” stated Irish head coach Jay Louderback. “She will bring a tremendous work ethic and a great deal of tennis knowledge to the LSU athletic program.”
Scaringe-Sell becomes the third Notre Dame assistant coach during Louderback’s tenure with the Irish to receive a head coaching job, joining the likes of current Illinois head coach Michelle Dasso and current Rice head coach Elizabeth Schmidt. Scaringe-Sell joins the Tigers’ staff after serving as the national coach of the regional training center for the United States Tennis Association (USTA) since August of 2011.
While at Notre Dame, she helped the team capture three BIG EAST titles as well as reach the national semifinals of the NCAA Championship in both 2009 and 2010, marking the best tournament results for the Irish in program history. Notre Dame, which also advanced to the semifinals of the 2009 ITA National Team Indoor Championships, finished the 2009 and 2010 seasons ranked No. 5 in the nation, the highest final ranking in school history.
Off the court, Notre Dame’s women’s tennis team earned the highest grade-point average among all of the Notre Dame’s teams with a 3.6 GPA in 2009 followed by a 3.65 in 2010.
Scaringe-Sell joined the Irish following a four-month span as one of two coaches for the USTA Summer Collegiate Team, which serves as an elite training program for the top American collegiate tennis players.
Scaringe-Sell got her start in coaching at the collegiate level in September of 2007 when she was named an assistant coach at Harvard. In her one season at Harvard, she helped recruit the nation’s seventh-best signing class in 2007 followed by helping set the stage for the nation’s No. 2 rated class the following year.
A 2003 graduate of the University of Florida, Scaringe-Sell served as team captain for the Gators from 2000-2003. During that span, the Gators captured the NCAA title in 2003 and finished as national runner-up in 2002. At the conference level, the Gators won the Southeastern Conference title in both 2001 and 2003 and captured SEC Tournament titles in 2000, 2002 and 2003.
Individually, Scaringe-Sell earned Academic All-SEC honors in 2000 and was the ITA South Region Player of the Year as a senior in 2003. She also was a member of the Florida Student-Athlete Advisory Council from 1999 to 2003 and was active in the Goodwill Gators Community Outreach Program for four years.
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