HAMPTON, Va. (April 6, 2026) … Hampton University head women's basketball coach Tamisha Augustin announced on Monday the hiring of Gail Striegler as Associate Head Coach and Josh Cooperwood as Assistant Coach.

Gail Striegler – Associate Head Coach
A veteran of nearly 30 years in the coaching profession, Gail Striegler joins the Hampton Pirates as Associate Head Coach. She has served on staffs at a variety of levels including Northwestern State, Stephen F. Austin, Georgia State, Central Florida, Long Island University Brooklyn, and at Minnesota.

During Striegler's time on the Minnesota staff, the Gophers set multiple program scoring records in 2015-16. They averaged 83.9 points per game to rank fourth in the nation, scoring 2,676 total over the season. Rachel Banham was received Big Ten Player of the Year, All-America first team and Wooden Award Top-Five accolades before being picked fourth overall in the WNBA Draft. In 2016-17, the Gophers had an All-Big Ten second team and CoSIDA Academic All-America selection in Carlie Wagner. Kenisha Bell, another guard, earned All-Big Ten Honorable Mention.

Striegler has a deep history of winning at the highest level of collegiate women's basketball, guiding her teams to three conference championships and eight NCAA Tournament appearances, including a Sweet 16 run as an assistant at Stephen F. Austin in 1996. During her head coaching tenure at the Central Florida, she was twice named Atlantic Sun Conference Coach of the Year. Striegler has accumulated over 200 wins and coached 11 nationally ranked recruiting classes.

Striegler has proven to be adept at both finding and developing talent, as she has assembled three top-25 recruiting classes and aided in the development of two Naismith finalists, 30 all-conference team selections, a conference rookie of the year, an all-defensive team pick and two all-freshman team honorees as both a head coach and assistant coach. 

During her time as the head coach at LIU Brooklyn, Striegler secured a program-best 96 victories, which included two seasons with 20 or more wins. The team's 22 wins in 2009-10 were the second-most in program history, while her 62 wins from 2009-12 were the most all-time over a three-year period for the Blackbirds. 

In her tenure with Central Florida from 1999-2007, Striegler led the Knights to three-straight conference championships from 2003-05, coached 22 all-conference selections and 33 academic all-conference recipients. Her teams ranked in the top-20 nationally three times in overall scoring, twice in blocked shots and once in three-point field goal percentage, while she also signed six Street & Smith Honorable Mention All-Americans, all while breaking the all-time attendance record in 2006. 

Along with her head coaching stops at LIU Brooklyn and UCF, Striegler has also served as an assistant coach at Georgia State and Northwestern State, as well as Stephen F. Austin State. She began her coaching career as a graduate assistant at Arkansas and joins the Pirates from serving as an assistant at Fayetteville (Ark.) High School. 

Striegler earned her master's degree in kinesiology from Arkansas and her bachelor's degree in kinesiology from Central Arkansas. A native of Fayetteville, Ark., she is a member of the University of Central Arkansas Hall of Fame.

Josh Cooperwood – Assistant Coach
Josh Cooperwood, a coach with nearly 15 years of NCAA Division I sideline experience, joins the Hampton women's basketball staff after serving on the Loyola University Maryland staff last season. Cooperwood recently participated in the WBCA Next Generation Institute Program at the Final Four in Phoenix.

Prior to Loyola, he spent two seasons at Memphis where he worked with a pair of American Athletic Conference players and led the recruiting for the highest-ranked player in program history. Some of those top players he brought to Memphis included: Tilly Boler, Dee Dee Hagemann, and Elauna Eaton.
  
Before joining the Tigers' staff in his hometown, Cooperwood was a member of coaching staffs at Winthrop, Georgia Southern, Louisiana, Mississippi Valley State, North Carolina Central and his alma mater Tennessee State.
 
Cooperwood spent the 2022-23 season at Gardner-Webb where he helped lead the Bulldogs to a 29-5 overall record, a perfect 18-0 mark in Big South Conference play, the league title and a first-round appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
 
After he wrapped up his college and professional playing career, Cooperwood got his start at Tennessee State where he was the director of women's basketball operations for a year before being promoted to assistant coach in 2012. By his penultimate year at his alma mater, Cooperwood helped the Tigers win the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) crown in 2015 and reach the program's first NCAA Tournament since the 1993-94 season.
 
Throughout in his career, he has coached 14 all-conference selections, the 2023 Big South Player and Defensive Player of the Year and two conference tournament most valuable players.
 
Cooperwood began his collegiate playing career at Chattanooga State where he was the Tennessee Junior College Athletic Association (TJCAA) Player of the Year and earned NJCAA All-America honors in 2001.
 
He then transferred to Tennessee State and earned All-OVC recognition in 2003. After playing professionally in Europe for nine years, Cooperwood received his bachelor of criminal justice and corrections from Tennessee State in 2013.