Though we are in the midst of the spring sports grind, the Eden Prairie High School activities department recently announced a pair of hires for their winter programs.
In recent weeks, EPHS has hired new coaches for girls’ hockey and wrestling.
Girls’ hockey
Shortly after the hockey season ended for both the boys’ and girls’ EPHS teams, there were two coaching openings. Now, both are filled.
Following the hiring of Mike Terwilliger, EPHS has found its new girls’ hockey coach in Steve Persian, per a release on April 22. He takes over for Jaime Grossman, who moved on to coach at Shakopee.
“I am thrilled to be joining the Eden Prairie Girls’ Hockey program and grateful for this opportunity,” Persian said in a release.
This hire marks the third for Persian when it comes to leading girls’ hockey programs.
His girls’ head coaching career when he led Orono from 2012-18. Then, he accepted a job to coach the highly-touted Breck squad. He won a pair of titles in 2019 and 2020. He abruptly resigned in the 2021 shortened season.
Wrestling
Eden Prairie High School has a new wrestling coach and one certainly who has experience.
Marcus LeVesseur was announced as the school’s new wrestling coach on April 29. He brings experience as both a wrestler himself and a coach.
LeVesseur has quite a vast experience on the mat. He was a four-time state individual champion at Minneapolis Roosevelt and Bloomington Kennedy. In college, he went a perfect 155-0 at Augsburg.
The new EP coach eventually tried his hand at Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). But he has also turned his eyes to coaching.
He spent time at Hopkins before becoming an assistant coach at powerhouse Shakopee in 2016. LeVesseur took over as the interim coach in 2021.
“We are blessed to have Marcus leading our wrestling program moving forward,” Reetz said in a release. “He is committed to building a winning program and to developing young people. I can’t wait to get him in front of our student athletes.”
LeVesseur takes over for Tom Gruhlke.
“I’m looking forward to the many opportunities for EP wrestling along with the challenges to come,” LeVesseur said in the same statement. “I want to make a huge impact in our wrestling community from K-12 by building the number of participants at each grade.
“This will be a challenging task, yet I’m fully confident that we will get it done.”