UAB's athletics department can't stop the bleeding. One day after firing athletics director Mark Ingram, the school has now confirmed that women's soccer head coach Lisa Mann is "currently out" — with a game scheduled for Thursday and no interim coach named.
That's the full statement from the university's athletics representative: "Coach Mann is currently out. We will share more when appropriate." No timeline. No explanation. No interim named. The Blazers have already played two games this season and are due on the pitch again in days.
A department coming apart at the seams
This isn't an isolated incident — it's a pattern. In July, head softball coach Taylor Smartt was fired following allegations of abuse and inappropriate relationships within her program. Ingram, who had been at the school for 11 years, was then shown the door on Tuesday. Now Mann is gone, or suspended, or something — UAB apparently can't bring itself to say which.
Men's basketball coach Andy Kennedy has been named interim athletics director while the school conducts what it calls a "national search" for a permanent replacement. So a basketball coach is now running an athletics department that's simultaneously managing at least two coaching vacancies in women's sports and the fallout from a very public governance collapse.
Mann came to UAB in 2023 after serving as the first-ever head coach in West Virginia State's women's soccer history. The Newcastle-born coach had led the Blazers to a 1-1 start this season — beating Georgia State before dropping Sunday's game to Mississippi State in Starkville. Four seasons in, this is how it ends, or pauses, or whatever UAB is calling it.
The wider picture
For anyone with action on UAB women's soccer this season, the situation is genuinely murky. A team mid-transition, no confirmed interim coach, and an administration too distracted to provide straight answers — that's not a recipe for stability on the pitch.
Ingram's tenure will be remembered as much for the Trent Dilfer experiment as anything else — a football hire so bad Dilfer was fired mid-season in 2025 with a 9-21 record. The damage from years of shaky decision-making is now showing up everywhere at once.
"I leave with tremendous pride in what we accomplished together," Ingram said on his way out. Someone at UAB might want to define what "accomplished" means before the next press release goes out.
