A veteran member of Coach Stein's staff, Edith Thompson enters her fifth season with the Mizzou women's basketball program, and her third as the Tigers' director of basketball operations. Her primary duties include academic counseling, organizing travel arrangements, and acting as the staff liaison with the ticket office and development staff. As supervisor of the team's academic success, Thompson works closely with the team's academic advisors to monitor classes, grades, tutor sessions, and degree progress. Thompson also manages the Sixth Stripe Club, the official booster club of the women's basketball program, serves as the assistant director of summer camps, and directs the program's community service and season-ticket efforts.
Thompson spent two seasons at Rhode Island after spending six seasons as an assistant coach at Ohio State. A former Buckeye herself, she coached several Ohio State players who went on to play professionally, including two-time All-American and Olympian Katie Smith, now with the Detroit Shock of the WNBA, and former Connecticut Sun player Adrienne Johnson.
A native of Shaker Heights, Ohio, Thompson took part in the high point of the Ohio State women's basketball program. Under head coach Nancy Darsch, who was an assistant coach on the 1984 and 1996 U.S. Olympic Women's Basketball teams, the Buckeyes won the 1993 Big Ten championship and reached the NCAA National Championship game before dropping a heartbreaker to Texas Tech, 84-82.
Thompson was a two-year starter for the Buckeyes who competed in their first-ever NCAA Tournament (1982) and won a pair of Big Ten Conference championships (as a player in 1982, and again as a coach in 1987).
Thompson received her bachelor's degree in education from Ohio State in 1995.