Trevor Kingma comes to Ellsworth CC to join the men’s basketball staff as an Assistant Coach. Prior to his time at ECC, he was a Head Men’s basketball Manager for the Illinois State University. He also spent time working with Midwest Prospect Academy (Mid Pro) out of Central Illinois as an AAU coach for their top tier independent program.

While Kingma was a manager at ISU, he helped with many aspects of the team. He helped with cutting film, practice plans and execution, recruiting, game day operations, and operational duties to help run an NCAA DI Mid-Major Program.

Kingma was a coach for Midwest Prospect Academy for the last 2 summers and helped players of all levels with basketball IQ, skill development, understanding recruiting, and much more. Midpro travels all around the Midwest in the summers to play at high level “NY2LA” tournaments. Recently, MidPro made waves by having the 2023 Mr. basketball of Illinois, Brock Harding who will be a freshman this year at the University of Iowa.

The Illinois native grew up in Mokena, IL a south suburb of Chicago and graduated from Illinois State University with a degree in Recreational Management in May 2023.

“I look forward to continuing to build winning culture here at Ellsworth Community College. I hope that my time at the Division 1 level will help better the players understanding of the game. It’s just as important that we as coaches lead them towards having good will, work ethic, and great humility as the players prepare for their next step in life, whether that is basketball or in life. It’s crazy all the places this orange ball can take you, but I’m blessed and thankful it brought me to Iowa Falls and Ellsworth Community College.”

Bender said, “As a former manager myself, I believe it is my duty to serve that community and I am partial to giving those who served a program in that role a chance to start their coaching careers. I got my start at the JUCO level in a similar role and am extremely grateful for that opportunity.  Trevor did an excellent job in his interview and fits our core values extremely well.  He is a hard worker who loves the game of basketball and needed someone to give him a chance.  Here at ECC we try and run our program like a DI, and what better way to help better serve our staff and players than to surround them with guys who have been at the ground level of NCAA DI basketball. Trevor will do a great job for us and I am excited to watch him grow in his new role as a coach.”