Sara Anastasieska joined RMU Women's Basketball Staff on May 13, 2024.
A native of Sydney, Australia, Anastasieska brings Division I playing and coaching experience to the Colonials.
Anastasieska comes to RMU after spending the last year as the Director of Operations at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her duties included assisting the coaching staff with recruiting, travel, and budgeting. She was also in charge of overseeing the team schedule and assist the coaches in on-court workouts during the summer, pre-season, and regular season. Sara acted as a liaison for women’s basketball as it pertained to other departments such as facilities, marketing, compliance, communications, and academic support.
Prior to joining UCSB in 2023, Anastasieska was a player development coach at Unlimited Potential Basketball. She led athletes through workouts and formulized individual workout plans for athletes of different skills and ages. Sara would lead and run after school programs to help kids from grades K-12 to learn the game of basketball.
Before joining Unlimited Potential Basketball, Anastasieska was a head coach of an AAU travel team in her home country of Australia as part of the ATC Academy. Sara coordinated travel, team dinners, create itineraries, etc. She would also plan practices and run film sessions for the team during tournament play as well as communicate with collegiate coaches about recruits on her team.
Prior to coaching, Anastasieska was a standout Division I basketball player as she was at multiple stops such as Illinois, Duke, UTSA, and California. Sara’s final stop was at Illinois where she was part of the 2022 Winter Academic All-Big Ten Team and a 2021-22 Big Ten Distinguished Scholar. Anastasieska played in 95 career games while starting 30 contests across those four schools. Some of her career highlights include scoring a career-high 25 points against then No. 5 UConn while she played at Cal, as well as scoring 23 points against Western Carolina when she was a member at Duke.
Anastasieskas earned her bachelor of science degree in Sociology from Cal in 2020. She also received a master’s in business administration from Duke (2021) and a masters in sports and recreation from Illinois in 2022. Sara was named Outstanding Female Scholar at Illinois which recognized the graduate student athlete with the highest GPA.
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Sara is the daughter of Jenny and Sasho Anastasieska and has one sister, Stefani.
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