In what’s quickly becoming a biennial occurrence, Cleveland State and head coach Chris Kielsmeier have agreed to a two-year contract extension. The revised deal runs through the 2029-30 season, which would be Kielsmeier’s 12th with the Vikings.
“I am very thankful and appreciative of the opportunity to impact lives as part of the Cleveland State women’s basketball program, and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with our student-athletes, coaches and staff on a daily basis,” Kielsmeier said in CSU’s release. “I’m grateful to president Laura Bloomberg and director of athletics Kelsie Gory Harkey for their belief in me to run this program, and I know that we have more to accomplish, so I can’t wait to get started as we look forward to the 2025-26 season and beyond!”
Since his arrival in Northeast Ohio from Division II’s Wayne State College in 2018, Kielsmeier has transformed a program of only sporadic consequence into one of the nation’s strongest mid-majors.
To that point, he has won 154 times in seven seasons, a victory total good for second place in school history (the present leader, Kate Peterson Abiad, required 15 years to accumulate her 206 wins). During the last three campaigns, CSU won 30, 29, and 27 games, the three highest totals ever posted by the Vikings. Kielsmeier’s teams have earned an additional pair of additional 20-win seasons, after Cleveland State had only reached that common success benchmark twice prior to 2018.
Kielsmeier has also more than doubled the Vikings’ banner population, including a pair of Horizon League championships (a tournament crown in 2022-23, and a regular season title in 2023-24), and postseason appearances ending each of the last five seasons. Highlights of that streak include the 2021 Women’s Basketball Invitational championship, a bid to the 2023 NCAA Tournament, and this spring’s march to the WNIT’s Fab 4. He has coached the last three HL Players of the Year, including Destiny Leo (2022-23), Colbi Maples (2023-24), and Mickayla Perdue (2024-25).
His overall record – including his time at Wayne State and Division III’s Howard Payne – boasts 568 career wins, the 115th-highest total ever across all three NCAA divisions, and 40th among active coaches.
Off the court, Cleveland State presently maintains a 3.66 cumulative grade point average, while more than 70 Vikings have received Horizon League Honor Roll recognition during Kielsmeier’s tenure. CSU’s long list of recent community initiatives includes work with Rainbow Babies, RAKE, Campus International School, Adopt-A-Family, and Lift Up Vikes!
Those successes helped lead to a previous extension for Kielsmeier after the 2022-23 season, though that negotiation was managed by former athletic director Scott Garrett. The new extension is the second time that current CSU boss Kelsie Gory Harkey has signed a contract with a head basketball coach, following the hiring of Rob Summers to lead the Vikings men’s program in April.
“Coach Kielsmeier has demonstrated remarkable leadership and an unwavering commitment to excellence, on and off the court, throughout his tenure at Cleveland State University,” Gory Harkey said in the school’s release. “He is dedicated to developing student-athletes as people, students and athletes who excel academically and represent our University with pride. I am so thrilled Coach Kielsmeier will continue to coach the young women in our program for years to come and elevate Cleveland State women’s basketball.”
For a successful mid-major coach like Kielsmeier, however, contract extensions are less about job security and past successes than they are about providing some certainty for the school, at least in the short term, dictated largely by the contract’s buyout terms.
The buyout established in Kielsmeier’s 2023 extension was set to drop to zero on July 1st, and the new deal undoubtedly resets that number at a level high enough to deter (some) external suitors for a couple years, while offering raises for the head coach and his staff. It also signals a bit of continuity for a program that desperately needed it, after losing most of its players to the transfer portal in the spring.
