Nicole Burke is in her first season with Jacksonville State, joining Sean Fraser's staff in early 2024.
Burke comes to Jax State from Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana where she spent the last two seasons on head coach Jim Watt’s staff. In two seasons with the Panthers, the program posted a 26-5-7 record. In 2023, HC advanced to the NCAA Division III Soccer Tournament after earning the automatic bid from the Hartland Collegiate Athletic Conference. The Panthers won the HCAC after blanking Transylvania University, 1-0, in the championship match. HC turned in an 8-0-1 mark in league play and claimed 14 wins in 2023 en route to back-to-back regular season HCAC titles.
Prior to her time at Hanover, she served as a graduate assistant at Bluffton University in 2021.
Having worked under a college soccer legend like Jim Watts at Hanover, Nicole has been developed properly. I couldn’t be more confident that we just hit a home run with this hire. Burke, who will work primarily with the Gamecocks’ goalkeepers, spent four seasons between the posts at Findlay from 2017-21. While a member of the of the Oilers, she helped the program to a pair of Great Midwest Athletic Conference regular season titles and a GMAC Tournament Championship. The Oilers advanced to the second round of the 2019 NCAA Division II Soccer Championship.
She earned her undergraduate degree in criminal justice from Findlay in 2021 and received a masters of business administration from Bluffton in 2023.
Before going to Findlay, she graduated from Hilliard Darby High School in Hilliard, Ohio, where she served as a captain on the soccer team for two years and set multiple school records. During this time, she also played for Ohio Premier ECNL and was a critical player in qualifying for multiple national championships.
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