In his 24th season directing the Missouri State program and 32nd year as a collegiate head coach, Kevin Kane embarks on a new challenge this season as he leads the Bears into their new home in Conference USA. After establishing a legacy as one of the most successful coaches in Missouri Valley Conference history, he seems perfectly suited to guide the Bears into a new, stronger CUSA.
Kane has brought recognition and respect to the Missouri State program and taken it to a level of success unprecedented in school history. This after spending his first eight years coaching at his alma mater, Northern Iowa, where he took a program mired at the bottom of the Valley when he took over to a consistent conference contender and runner-up finisher in his final season there in 2002. In his last four seasons guiding the Panthers, they were the only MVC team to finish in the top three at the conference championship all four years.
At MSU, his teams have captured four MVC crowns and NCAA Regional berths in the last decade, including a nine-shot victory in 2023, a year after finishing second by a single stroke. The Bears have climbed to as high as 58th nationally during his tenure and have remained one of the top teams in the Valley and region ever since. They have achieved all this while playing a strong schedule which often finds them facing some of the nation's and region's top teams.
Since 2002, the Bears have steadily worked their way back into the regional spotlight, climbing from a sixth-place Missouri Valley Conference finish the year prior to Kane's arrival to a record-breaking year in 2006-07 to conference titles and NCAA regional appearances in 2012, '17, '18 and '23, and runner-up finishes in 2015, '22 and '25.
MSU has rewritten the school record book over the past decade and has put itself in the middle of the conference title hunt virtually every year. The Bears have pocketed 94 top-five finishes and 16 tournament championships over the last 15 seasons.
Kane was named MVC Coach of the Year an unprecedented seven times -- 1998 and 2002 at UNI, and 2012, '15, '17, '18 and '23 at MSU. He has directed his players to 50 all-conference performances between the two schools, four conference players of the year (Sally Hinton, 2007; Missy Linnens, 2008; Verena Gimmy, 2018; and Abby Cavaiani, 2020) and four newcomers of the year (Catherine Dolan, 2009; Heather Smith, 2010; Stine Pettersen, 2015; and Cavaiani, 2019). In addition, Dolan, Hinton, Gimmy and Cavaiani are four of just a dozen players in league history to earn all-Valley honors four times. Hinton and Linnens also are two of the 10 members on the MVC's 25-Year Team honored in 2018.
In 2023, Cavaiani became just the second golfer in league history to earn all-conference honors five times, made possible due to the Covid-19 pandemic. She was a two-time Valley Golf Scholar-Athlete of the Year and, following her graduation in 2023, received the Dr. Charlotte West Award as the Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year across all sports in the conference.Â
Cavaiani is far from the only Bear who's achieved success on the course and in the classroom. The Bears led all MSU's teams in grade-point average in the fall of 2023 and are perennially well represented on the Missouri Valley Scholar-Athlete Team, with 18 first team scholar-athlete selections since 2002.
"We certainly want to have success on the golf course," said Kane, "and strive to do everything we can to make that happen. But success in the classroom and as a citizen out in the real world is even more important. The percentage of people who go on to play golf for a living after college is miniscule, so it's the quality of the education and your sense of purpose and wanting to make a difference in the world...you take those with you when you leave here, and we try not to lose sight of that."
Kane, a native of Bernard, Iowa, earned his bachelor's degree in Communications from UNI in 1984. He and his wife, Laurie, have two daughters.
