In 2016, Alexa Golden made Kent State’s starting lineup as a freshman. When she graduated in 2019 as an all-MAC defensive player four years later, she had two degrees.

Now she is one of the youngest assistant coaches in the country.

Golden, who is just 23, officially got the job this week, barely a year after she became a graduate assistant and 10 months after she became the team’s director of basketball operations.

She had been doing the duties of an assistant since Morgan Toles left the Flashes in June for an assistant coaching job at Florida State, her alma mater. But promotions have been slow and complicated in Kent State’s COVID-hiring freeze.

“There aren’t many assistants so young,” coach Todd Starkey said in an interview this week. “It happens on a rare occasion, but it’s certainly not the standard.”

“She was always a coach on the floor for us when she was a player,” Starkey said in an earlier interview. “She’s an exceptional person. She’s earned everything she’s gotten, and it’s more about the job that somebody can do than the amount of experience they have.

“Lex has done an exceptional job at everything she’s done from player to GA to DOBO to assistant.”

Golden, who went to high school outside Pittsburgh, started 107 games for the Flashes over four years. She’s the only player in KSU women’s history to graduate with more than 500 points, 500 rebounds, 200 assists 200 steals and 100 3-point baskets. Her senior year she was 19th in the country in steals.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice in December of her junior year and a master’s in sports and recreation management in May 2019. She was a three-time Academic All-MAC selection.

Starkey has said one of the reasons he has always liked Golden in all of her roles is that “she hates to lose as much as I do.”

She is Kent State’s first new assistant since Mike McKee was hired at the start of Starkey’s second year. The KSU staff has been remarkably stable under Starkey, one of the reasons for the team’s 71-57 record and two MAC East titles in the coach’s four years.

Toles joined Starkey’s staff a month after he was hired.

“She meant a ton to our program,” Starkey said. “She was a phenomenal player development coach, a really good recruiter…and just part of our family. She’s missed, but we’ve also celebrated this great opportunity with her.”

Toles, who started at point guard at both Auburn and Florida State in college, had worked with KSU’s point guards. Associate head coach Fran Recchia will move into that role. Golden will work with wings, which was her position for the Flashes.

KSU also has added graduate assistant Dasia Logan, who graduated from St. Bonaventure in May. Logan started 38 games as a guard in two years for the Bonnies (she transferred from the College of Charleston). She played Kent State twice in those two years, scoring 18 points against the Flashes in 2018. (KSU won both games.)

Starkey said he hoped to hire a director of operations, which is sort of a hybrid administrative assistant/assistant coach, this fall. But that would depend on the state of Kent State’s hiring. The university is in a semi-hiring freeze, with each position having to be justified at several levels.

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All about new transfer Bexley Wallace, a 6-3 post player who spent two years at Penn State, and 2021 recruit Lexy Linton, a 5-9 New Jersey guard. NCAA transfer rules require Wallace to sit out this season.

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Shumate sidelined with knee injury

Sophomore wing Katie Shumate, Kent State’s second-leading scorer and rebounder last season, is out indefinitely after having knee surgery this summer.

“It was kind of a chronic thing she had played through,” Starkey said. “She played with a knee sleeve most of last year, and it was an irritant. So she went in to get that checked out and needed to have some stuff cleaned up.”

Will Shumate play at all this season?

“We don’t know,” Starkey said. “It’s a decision we’ve put on hold to see a couple of things — how her rehab continues and how the season starts to play out.”

Shumate, who made the MAC all-freshman team last season, is the third starting guard lost from last season’s lineup. Senior Megan Carter graduated and sophomore Asiah Dingle transferred to Stony Brook. Dingle led the team in scoring last season at 13.3 points a game, and Carter led the Flashes two years ago at 15.8. Shumate averaged 12.2 points last season.

Shumate’s logical replacement is junior Hannah Young, a four-time all-state selection in Virginia. She averaged 28 minutes over the Flashes’ last 10 games, averaging 6.4 points and 4.5 rebounds. She had 12 points against Toledo and Bowling Green and 11 against Ohio and had nine rebounds against Miami and eight against Northern Illinois. For most of her time at Kent, she played behind Golden, Carter and Shumate.

Sophomore guard Clare Kelly also likely will see an increased role while Shumate is out of action. Kelly averaged 2.5 points and 1.4 rebounds as a freshman and saw increased playing time in the second half of the conference season. She never did find the range that made her one of the state’s top 3-point shooters in high school.

Grinding in the weight room and on the court. ⚡️💪🏀 pic.twitter.com/87XYJPJ1V5

— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) October 6, 2020

The team posted this video of workouts and practices this week.

Schedule is still a work in progress

Starkey told the Record-Courier early last week that four of five non-conference games were “pretty much set.”

“Scheduling has been difficult, just like everything else these days,” he said.

“At this point, we are scheduled to have non-conference games,” Starkey said in his interview with wbbFlashes. “But to say anything is with a grain of salt. And that could change in any 24-hours news cycle.“

The earliest teams can play is No. 25, the day before Thanksgiving.

Kent State is scheduled to open conference play at Toledo on Wednesday, Dec. 30.

Dingle gets waiver to play this season

Dingle, who announced her transfer to Stony Brook, in April, has received a waiver from the NCAA to be immediately eligible to play. (Without the waiver, she would have to sit out a season.)

Dingle had applied for a hardship waiver. Part of her reason for transferring was to be closer to her father in Boston, who has had several strokes.