Duke has restructured and extended soccer coach Mike Elko’s contract by the 2029 season, the college launched Monday. The university’s press release notes that fragment of this recent contract is an “enhanced, escalating mannequin” for his coaching workers’s salary pool.
“Over the final 18 months, Coach Elko has cultivated and performed a notion to push Duke Soccer forward with famous consideration to part, energy and a chronic dedication to excellence,” Duke athletics director Nina King acknowledged. “His passionate dedication to the Duke expertise sets the customary, and we are lucky to enjoy him and the complete workers rising the young males in our program into elite student-athletes and future community leaders. Coach Elko’s imaginative and prescient acutely aligns with the solutions of the university, and I might per chance per chance now not be extra excited to enjoy him manual Duke Soccer smartly into the future.”
Elko was hired in late 2021 as a predominant-time head coach after serving as the defensive coordinator at Texas A&M. He earned ACC Coach of the 365 days honors after main the Blue Devils to an 8-4 customary season and a accumulate in the Navy Bowl. Elko’s nine wins had been the most for Duke in a single season since 2014, and they had been the most for a predominant-365 days coach in program history. This got here although he inherited a team that went 3-9 in 2021 with an 0-8 exhibiting in ACC play.
“Real attributable to of Dr. (Vincent) Trace and Nina (King) for their dedication now not most animated to me however also the soccer workers and complete program we now enjoy here at Duke,” Elko acknowledged. “This might likely per chance per chance simply enable us to proceed to present elite opportunities for our young males to make and prevail at one of many most prestigious universities in the nation. We got here here with a mission to create a program that might per chance per chance became completely the Perfect of Both Worlds, and here’s any other step in that route. The future of Duke Soccer is amazingly brilliant.”
Duke enters the 2023 season with excessive expectations, attributable to of Elko’s breakout 365 days 1 and the return of quarterback Riley Leonard. The Blue Devils originate the 365 days on Sept. 4 against Clemson.