Kayla Ard
Kayla Laine Ard (born February 10, 1984) is an American college basketball coach who is currently women's basketball head coach at Utah State. Early life and education. Born in Hammond, Louisiana, Ard grew up in nearby Loranger and graduated from Loranger High School in 2002. She played basketball for one season at Chipola College, then transferred to Southeastern Louisiana University, where she played three games in the 2004–05 season, averaging 3.0 points per game. She graduated from Southeastern Louisiana in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in general studies, and later earned a master's degree in  psychology from the University of Phoenix in 2013. Coaching career. Ard started her coaching career as assistant coach of the AAU Domino's Basketball program in New Orleans, Louisiana from 2003 to 2005, followed by one season as a coach at Hammond High School (2005-06 season), and head coach of the Hammond Tornadoes AAU organization in 2007. After coaching at Hammond, Ard was cast in the lead role of a Gatorade commercial, which aired from 2008-2009. Ard was then a recruiter and assistant coach at Pensacola State College in Florida during the 2010–11 and 2011-12 seasons, then  spent a year at Troy University, working under Chanda Rigby. From 2013 to 2015, Ard was an assistant coach at Clemson University, then served as the assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at the University of Dayton from 2015 to 2017. While at Dayton, Ard coached a coached a team that was top 20 in the nation in 2015. From 2017 to 2020, she was the associate head coach, recruiting coordinator, and offensive coordinator at the University of Denver, including 11 games in the 2019 season as the interim head coach which produced a six-game winning streak that was the  school's longest in eight years. On March 23, 2020, it was announced that she had been hired as the head coach for the Utah State University's basketball program.