Shayna Gore joined the Youngstown State women's basketball family in May 2024 as an assistant coach on Melissa Jackson's initial staff.
Gore oversees Youngstown State’s recruiting efforts as its recruiting coordinator, and she is charged with working to enhance the team’s brand as its social media coordinator. Gore also helps shape YSU’s defensive strategy, coordinates the program’s Elite Camp, and serves as the position coach for the posts.
The Penguins played their best basketball down the stretch of the 2024-25 season, winning three of their final four games of the regular season and earning a passionate 73-70 victory over Cleveland State on Senior Day. Youngstown State finished the campaign with 12 victories while working in 10 newcomers and battling through several season-ending injuries at key positions.
Post-play was a key component of Youngstown State’s success in 2024-25, and Sophia Gregory highlighted YSU’s large and promising freshman class by being named the Horizon League Freshman of the Year. After stepping into a starting role at the beginning of December, she went on to lead all conference freshmen in points, rebounds, blocks and steals per game, and she also paced her classmates in field-goal percentage and double-doubles. Gregory was a three-time Horizon League Freshman of the Week, and she finished her first collegiate season averaging 10.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game.
Before Gregory took the conference by storm, fellow freshman forward Sarah Baker was in line to make a run at the top freshman award. She was named the Horizon League Freshman of the Week three times in the first five weeks before an injury stopped her season in early December. Redshirt junior Faith Burch had the best season of her career with averages of 6.8 points and 5.8 rebounds.
Gore came to Youngstown with an outstanding list of accomplishments as a Division I student-athlete and three years of coaching experience at the Division I level.
Most recently before coming to YSU, Gore spent the 2023-24 season at Western Carolina in her first position as a full-time assistant coach. In her year with the Catamounts, Gore's duties included on and off-campus recruiting, organizing official and unofficial visits, player development, social media, marketing and scouting.
In her two seasons as a graduate assistant at Indiana, Gore worked closely with Big Ten Conference Defensive Player of the Year Mackenzie Holmes and first-team All-Big Ten selection and WNBA draft pick Grace Berger. Holmes and Berger earned All-America honors, and the Hoosiers won 52 games in those two seasons. Indiana advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2021-22, and it collected 28 wins while earning the program's first-ever No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament in 2022-23.
Gore's coaching career began at the high school level as she was the youngest head coach in West Virginia at St. Albans High School in St. Albans, W. Va. She led the Red Dragons to impressive victories over the No. 5 and No. 9 teams in the state in her rookie head coaching season in 2019-20.
Gore had a notable playing career at Marshall from 2015-19 and earned All-Conference USA accolades three times. She finished her collegiate career with 2,081 points, ranking third-best in program history and sixth all-time in C-USA history. Gore made 303 career 3-pointers, the most ever by a Thundering Herd player, and helped Marshall to postseason berths in the Women's NIT and the Women's Basketball Invitational.
In high school, Gore was the West Virginia Gatorade State Player of the Year in 2015 and a four-time first-team All-State selection at Logan High School.
Gore earned her bachelor's degree in health science from Marshall in 2019, and she earned master’s degree in public affairs at Indiana University in 2023.
