PHOTO PROVIDED - New Marshalltown Community College men’s basketball coach Ryan Flack poses for a photo at the Student Activity Center at MCC.

Student-athlete, assistant men’s basketball coach, and Marshalltown Education Partnership/MEP Program Coordinator. These are all titles Ryan Flack has held at Marshalltown Community College.

As of this summer, he has added a new title: head men’s basketball coach.

Flack, a Nevada native, had served as the assistant coach to Brynjar Brynjarsson for the last three years and replaces him after Brynjarsson stepped down in May.

“Brynjar is the reason I am a college basketball coach. If it wasn’t for him taking a chance on me as player and then a student-assistant for him 12 years ago, I would have never come to MCC,” said Flack. “He has had such an influence on me professionally and personally during the course of the last 12 years.”

Flack also spent one year at John Wood Community College as an assistant coach.

Prior to moving into junior college athletics, Flack’s basketball experience included two years at South Dakota State as a graduate assistant coach. He also bounced between Urbandale High School assistant coaching responsibilities and a year as the Grand View University junior varsity and assistant varsity coach.

“Juggling both of those opportunities was definitely a unique challenge and experience,” he said.

Flack spent a second year at Urbandale as part of the coaching staff along with head coach Brad Bjorkgren, helping the team reach the 2013 state tournament.

“The opportunity to work with coach Bjorkgren and coach (Denis) Schaefer (at Grand View) was a great learning experience and quite honestly, two of my favorite years in coaching.”

Flack was a student-manager at Iowa State University under Fred Hoiberg for one year as well.

“The experience at Iowa State was one with so many takeaways from the standpoint of being a college basketball coach. The opportunity to learn college basketball and how it is run on a daily basis at that high level was a lot of fun.”

Flack graduated from Nevada High School in 2007, playing one season of basketball and then staying on as a student-assistant.

“The opportunity to be the head men’s basketball coach at MCC is special, because this is where I played and have so much familiarity with the program the past decade,” he said.

With the Tigers graduating 10 players last season, they return only two members of last year’s squad. Flack has been on the job for a little over a month and is heavily recruiting now.

“We play in the best junior college league in the country and recruiting has to be a priority,” he said. “It’s also a priority to get the best local kids, who can contribute in a positive way for us.”

The 2019-20 school year starts August 26.

“I’m not going to redesign the wheel. Every coach I’ve worked for, I’ve learned something, so hopefully a little piece of each of those coaches will play into what I’m doing,” said Flack. “We can build on the way we have done things the last three years. It’s really just putting a roster together and keeping everyone accountable and getting better every day. We are going to have the goal to win each day, whether that is in the classroom or things in the community that we do as an athletic department or as a team. We just want to get better and compete in everything we do.”