Georgia assistant coach Kim Hairston, an ace recruiter who worked under Joanne Boyle at Richmond and California, has re-joined her former boss as part of Virginia’s new staff.
Hairston certainly has plenty of in-state connections. A native of Bassett, Va., Hairston was an assistant at Richmond in 2004-05 when the Spiders went 23-8 and earned the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth in 14 years. She also spent three years as an assistant at JMU. And as a player, Hairston was the 1996 Big South Rookie of the Year at Radford and helped the Highlanders advance to the NCAA Tournament. She hit 40.2 percent of her 3-pointers that season (45-112), the second-highest figure in program history. She later transferred to Richmond and made the CAA All-Defensive team in 2000.
Hairston comes to Virginia after four years at Georgia, where she made an immediate impact upon joining the staff of Andy Landers in 2007. “Kim is very well organized from a recruiting and an office standpoint,” Landers said. “She’s very professional. She’s very excited about being the best she can be and she works at that every day. Before she was hired, I thought all that about her. What I didn’t know was how good she was going to be on the floor. As we progressed through workouts before the fall it became apparent pretty quickly that she’s excellent there. She brings great enthusiasm, has a great understanding of the game, motivates players well and teaches well.”
Last year, Hairston made minor news with the Lady Bulldogs when she was named in a secondary NCAA violation, one of 14 Georgia self-reported on its athletic program in 2010, for accepting a Facebook friend request from a 2012 recruit prior to the time coaches can send electronically transmitted correspondence to recruits. Hairston was unaware accepting the request wasn’t allowed; the Lady Bulldogs staff was forbidden to contact that recruit for 30 days.