Elgin athletic director Poore stepping down

The coach’s wife is on the move again.

Elgin athletic director Gwen Poore, whose husband, Pat, has been a member of Jerry Kill’s football coaching staff at Northern Illinois University for the past three seasons, will step down from that post when her contract expires in mid June, it was announced in an e-mail to Elgin staff last week.

Like the majority of the NIU coaching staff, Pat Poore has joined Kill at the University of Minnesota, where Kill was named head coach in early December.

“Coach Kill took the University of Minnesota job and he took his offensive and defensive coordinators with him right away while my husband and the other coaches stayed and coached the bowl game,” Gwen Poore said Tuesday. “And NIU won, so I’m very proud of them.

“Pat went up there the day after the (2010 Humanitarian) bowl game and started right away with recruiting.”

The move to Minnesota will be the Poore’s ninth stop in seven states. Their longest stretch in one place was seven seasons in Carbondale while Pat was a member of Kill’s staff at Southern Illinois University.

“ I will finish the school year out and move this summer,” Gwen said. “The wife has to go. It’s a little too far to commute.”

Gwen Poore was hired as Elgin’s athletic director in May of 2009. It was her first experience as an athletic director after coaching four different sports over a 15-year span.

“I’m really privileged to have worked at Elgin and I appreciate everything that they’ve done,” Poore said. “I’ll miss everyone here. We have wonderful kids, wonderful boosters and the kids have been great.

“Hopefully, when they hire the new principal and that person hires the new athletic director, I can help with the transition.”