Skip To Main Content
Skip To Main Content

Chadron State College Athletics

Chadron State College athletics
Tim Connealy

Tim Connealy

2015 – Tim Connealy is entering his eigth season as the head coach at Chadron State College.

Connealy, a former graduate assistant and assistant head coach at the University of Nebraska-Kearney for four seasons, has won the fourth most games at Chadron State.

He has coached plenty of exciting teams. He led the Eagles to an 11-16 record during his first season and followed that with an 8-19 mark in 2009-10, narrowly missing the RMAC playoffs.

In 2011-12, Connealy helped guide the CSC women to an 11th place finish in the conference and a four-game winning streak where the Eagles won two games in overtime.

Connealy's motion offense has helped several CSC players flourish, especially Kaitlin Petri who was named All-RMAC and became just the second player in school history to earn All-American honors.

In addition, in the 2008-09 season the Eagles led all of NCAA Division II in 3-pointers made with 9.7 per game.

In 2013-14, Connealy coached All-RMAC performers Kattie Ranta and Kayli Rageth. He's also been on the sidelines for two of Chadron State's 1,000 point scorers and has coached three of the top 10 scorers in school history.

Connealy joined the Lopers in 2004 as a graduate assistant and was promoted to assistant coach in the summer of 2006. During his four years working under former UNK head coach Carol Russell, the two helped lead the Lopers to an 84-46 record and a 57-19 mark in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, including two NCAA tournament berths. In the 2006-07 season, the Lopers advanced to the Sweet 16 and Connealy was the acting head coach during the Regional Final game against North Dakota while Russell was recovering from giving birth.

"I want to build a program that’s not just based on wins and losses, but one that will represent Chadron State in a positive manner,” Connealy said.

Connealy played two seasons on the men’s basketball team at Chadron State before playing one season at Hastings College. In 2004, he graduated from Hastings College with a degree in secondary education. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in educational administration.

Connealy, who began his coaching career at Harvard High where he was an assistant on the boys team for two years, was instrumental in helping the Loper women be ranked in the top five nationally for overall team GPA. In 2006-07, UNK was second in the nation, and in 2007-08 the Lopers were fourth.

“The most important thing to me is academics,” he said. “I place the utmost importance on it.”

That was easy to see when the Chadron State College women's basketball team placed second on the Women's Basketball Coaches Association Academic Top 25 Team Honor Roll with a GPA of 3.641 following the 2010 season. The Eagles posted the fourth highest GPA in all of WBCA's five divisions.

The Eagles were also second in the WBCA Top 25 Academically following the 2011 season with a 3.644 and Kaitlin Petri was named an Academic All-American in 2012.

In fact, the CSC women posted the fourth-highest GPA in all of the WBCA’s five divisions – Divisions I, II and III, NAIA and Junior College.

Connealy, who graduated from Chadron High School in 1999 and was a starter on the Cardinals’ Class B state championship basketball team, was born and raised in Chadron. He was a ball boy for the football team while growing up and often attended CSC basketball games.

His older brother Dan graduated from Chadron State and his sister, Mary, played three years for the UNK women’s basketball team.