Centenary University have officially announced Dirk Kelly as the new Head Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team. Kelly served as the Assistant Coach during the 2022-23 season, which was his first season with the Cyclones.
Kelly has twenty-seven years of coaching experience at both the high school and collegiate level where he has shown a lot of success at both levels. Throughout both levels, Kelly has accumulated three-hundred eighty (380) career wins and will look to carry that success into next season.
Before coaching, Kelly was a four year member of the basketball team at Fairleigh Dickinson University – Florham under the late Roger Kindell from 1982-86). At FDU, Kelly was a captain in his senior season, a 1986 All-MAC Honorable Mention, and was selected to the NJ College Senior All-Star Game in 1986. Kelly earned a B.A. in History at FDU in 1986.
Post-Grad, Kelly attended Mississippi College School of Law for one semester before making the decision to pursue a career in teaching and coaching which would pay off tremendously. Kelly would then attend Rutgers University – Newark to earn a teaching certification and would go on to teach social studies from 1989-20 (Newton HS – 11 years, Roxbury HS – 20 years). In ’01, Kelly would earn his MATL from Nova Southeastern University. Throughout his teaching career, Kelly was a seven-time teacher of the year nominee (’04, ’07, ’11, ’12, ’18, ’19, ’20).
