Mizzou fires tennis coach one week before SEC play. Here’s the interim replacement
Missouri Director of Athletics Desiree Reed-Francois has made another coaching change in her year-and-a-half tenure at MU.
Missouri announced Thursday that it has fired head tennis coach Chris Wootton, marking the fifth coaching change Reed-Francois has overseen during her time in Columbia.
MU’s AD now turns the reigns of the tennis program over to Bianca Turati, who will serve as the program’s interim head coach for the rest of the 2023 season. SEC play begins on March 3 for the tennis team.
“In a short time in Columbia, I have learned about how special Mizzou is, and I welcome the opportunity to provide consistency and leadership for our team during the rest of the season,” Turati said in a statement. “We have an impressive group of student-athletes in the program. I look forward to continuing to coach them and share my experiences as both a college and professional player to help our team achieve its goals.”
Turati played college tennis at Texas, earning two All-American nods during her Longhorns career. She also played professionally for three years before joining Missouri as an assistant coach in January.
Reed-Francois isn’t a stranger to changes. So far she has hired new head coaches for volleyball, cross country, women’s golf and men’s basketball.
Her hiring of Dennis Gates in the men’s basketball program has been a particularly successful move thus far, as Gates has led the Tigers to a 20-win season and has them on the cusp of an NCAA Tournament berth.
While the change in the men’s basketball program was Reed-Francois’ biggest decision to date, coaching changes within the different Olympic sports have provided other opportunities for MU’s AD to reshape the athletic department.
Some of those decisions contain similarities to how she built successful programs in the past. In December, Reed-Francois made a change at the helm of the volleyball program by firing Joshua Taylor and hiring Dawn Sullivan from UNLV. Reed-Francois had previously hired Sullivan at UNLV when she was director of athletics in 2018.
Among other hires, MU hired Lindsey Anderson from the College of Southern Idaho in Feb. 2022, after Anderson had earned 2021 National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division I Coach of the Year honors.
Reed-Francois’ hire of Gates was based on a similar premise, as he built Cleveland State into a top-rated mid-major program that competed in the NCAA Tournament and NIT, but also on Gates’ experiences assisting at Florida State.
The next head coach of the tennis program — whether Reed-Francois decides to remove Turati’s interim tag or conduct a hiring process — will be the next insight into how she plans on building another MU program.
The Star has partnered with the Columbia Daily Tribune for coverage of Missouri Tigers athletics.
This story was originally published February 23, 2023 at 11:28 AM with the headline "Mizzou fires tennis coach one week before SEC play. Here’s the interim replacement."