• Staff

• Paul Fessler
• Kerri Stockwell
• Angie Woods
• Drew Woods
• Katie LaViolette

Paul Fessler enters his ninth season at the head of the Golden Bears program in 2008-09.  With a 178-66 record in the past eight seasons, Fessler is the ninth winningest active DII coach with a win percentage of .7295 (min. 5 years as a head coach at a DII school; includes record at four-year colleges only). Including four seasons spent at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, Fessler has a career record of 279-84.  He is the seventh coach in CU women's basketball history and just the second coach at Concordia to reach 100 career wins.

Paul Fessler has built a winning tradition at Concordia University, leading the team to back-to-back NSIC regular season and tournament championships in 2006-07 and 2007-08, marking the only time that an NSIC program has repeated with both titles.  The Golden Bears had their seventh straight 20+ win season in 2007-08, going 28-3 overall to match a program record for most wins.  They won the regular season title with a 16-2 league mark and went on to win the tournament title, as well.  The team nearly swept the NSIC post-season awards, taking Co-Players of the Year (Behnke and LaViolette), Defensive Player of the Year (Schroeder) and Fessler nabbing his second straight NSIC Coach of the Year honor.

Fessler has guided the Golden Bears to six straight NCAA Tournament berths, reaching the dance every season that they have been eligible since 2002-03.  Concordia holds the longest current post-season berth record among all schools in the region.

In 2006-07, Fessler had arguably his finest coaching performance. After the team started the year a disappointing 2-7, the Golden Bears rallied to win 15 of 16, including a 10-game winning streak, and had won 20 of 22 by the time their 22-10 season finally ended in a dramatic 92-89 overtime loss to Nebraska-Kearney in the NCAA regional.

For the first time in his distinguished career, Fessler was named the NSIC Coach of the Year, capturing the NSIC Regular Season Championship with a 15-3 league record before capturing the NSIC Tournament Championship - the first time that Concordia has swept the league titles.

Under Fessler, Concordia has won six Northern Sun titles, three in the regular season and three conference tournaments. They have reached the NCAA tournament six consecutive years and have one sweet sixteen appearance (2004-05).

In 2005-06, the Golden Bears set another milestone for the program, finishing with the 11th-highest grade point average in the nation with a 3.46 team GPA, marking the first time CU was recognized in the WBCA Top 25 Academic Programs.

In 2003-04, the Bears set a school record for wins, going 28-4 and were ranked in the WBCA Top 25 for a majority of the season, finishing in the #11 spot in the Final Top 25 Poll. Their 27-3 regular season record was good enough to earn the #1 ranking in the North Central Regional Tournament along with the right to host it. In the regional tournament played at the Gangelhoff Center, the Golden Bears defeated Minnesota Duluth in the quarterfinals to earn their first NCAA tournament win before dropping the semifinal match-up to defending National Champion South Dakota State.

They did one game better in the big dance in 2004-05, defeating Metro State in the first round before upsetting host North Dakota 78-76 in Grand Forks to advance to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen, just a win shy from the regional title. 

The Bears finished the 2004-05 season 25-8 and ranked #20 in the Final WBCA poll. In 2005-06, the Bears improved their NCAA Tournament record under Fessler to 4-4, defeating NSIC regular season and tournament champion Wayne State in the opening round before falling to St. Cloud State in the semifinals.

Fessler was named interim head coach at Concordia on August 15, 2000 and inherited a program that struggled to post double-digit wins in a season for nearly a decade. In his first season, Fessler guided the Bears to a 12 win season as CU was the surprise of the Northern Sun. A key stepping stone for Fessler in his first year was defeating perennial power Minnesota Duluth for the first time in 23 years. Fessler was named permanent head coach following that victory on February 15, 2001 and finished 8-10 in the NSIC.

During his first full season as the full-time head coach, the Golden Bears continued to ascend, setting a then-program record for wins with 22 and gaining even more respect in the NSIC with a second place finish and a 13-5 league record.

The following year, Fessler's Bears took another step forward as they earned their first trip to the NCAA Tournament in program history and posted back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time since the 1984-85 and 1985-86 seasons, finishing 21-8.

Prior to coaching for the Golden Bears, Fessler began his college coaching career when he was hired to coach the Anoka-Ramsey Community College program in 1996. During his tenure at ARCC, Fessler turned the Golden Rams into a national power. In four seasons as head coach, Fessler turned out an astonishing record of 101-18.  His teams claimed back-to-back-to-back NJCAA III National Championships from 1997-99 and finished second in 2000. Fessler's ARCC teams held the No.1 national ranking from November, 1997 through January, 1999.  Anoka-Ramsey's 1998 championship team averaged 88 points per game, breaking the national scoring record. He had six all-Americans at ARCC.

Fessler's coaching experience began with coaching stints at the middle school and high school levels in Cedar Falls, Iowa and Fort Worth, Tex. Coach Fessler's head coaching career began at St. Anthony Village High School, in Minneapolis, MN, in 1993. There, he inherited a program that had eight consecutive losing seasons.  In three seasons at St. Anthony, Fessler's squads posted a 45-27 record.  Fessler also has some AAU Basketball coaching success. In the summer of 1999, he guided the North Tartan AAU All-Star team to a Gold Medal at the Junior Olympics in Cleveland, Ohio.

Fessler is a native a Calumet, Iowa and earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Northern Iowa in 1988.

College:  Earned his bachelor’s degree in 1988 from Northern Iowa and a master’s degree at Concordia University in Organizational Management in 2005.

High School: A 1983 graduate of Sutherland High School in Sutherland, Iowa.  Lettered in football, basketball and baseball.

Resides: White Bear Lake, Minn. with wife Shelly and daughter Jade (11).