Coach of the Year Burrows leaving MHS

Steve Chestnut may have let the cat out of the bag a little early when he mentioned the departure of Kati Burrows.

At an informational meeting with parents Wednesday, the superintendent of Maricopa Unified School District said the Maricopa High School girls basketball coach was leaving to become an assistant coach at Montana State University.

MSU women’s coach Tricia Binford said the position on her staff had not even been made public yet but a hiring announcement would be made soon.

Burrows, who was unavailable for comment, submitted her resignation to MUSD this month.

Burrows guided the MHS girls team to its first state championship this year, her first season with the Rams. Maricopa finished with a 29-5 record, and Burrows was named Division II Coach of the Year by the Arizona Basketball Coaches Association and All-USA Arizona American Family Insurance High School Girls Basketball Big Schools Coach of the Year.

***ADVERTISEMENT***MSU is Burrows’ alma mater. A Bozeman, Montana, native, she was on back-to-back conference championship teams at the Division I university. She graduated in 2005, but her MSU experience was not always rosy. In 2010, in the middle of a lawsuit her former coach filed against the university after being fired, Burrows had to testify in U.S. District Court about how the head coach had maltreated the team. (MSU won the case.)

Burrows later played professional basketball in Europe before turning to coaching at the high school level. She was an assistant at St. Mary’s High School and Mesa Dobson. MHS was her first stint as a head coach.