JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – For the second-straight year, Lincoln head softball coach Jason Ollison and head women's basketball coach Drea Mize have been named as "Missouri's Best" at their positions in the 2024 edition of Missouri's Best Magazine.
 
Ollison, entering his second year as the head coach of the Lincoln softball team, helped lead the project to renovate the turf at LU Softball Field this past spring. Ollison wasted no time acclimating to the changes, as he coached LU to victories in both the first-ever game at the newly-improved on-campus facility as well as in Lincoln's final home game of 2023. Before coming to LU, Ollison spent the previous six years working at Versailles High School, including serving as the head softball coach in 2020 and 2021. In each of those years, Versailles broke the school record for victories in a single season, with Ollison and his staff earning the Tri-County Conference Coaching Staff of the Year award following each season.
 
From 2017 through 2022, Ollison also served as the head baseball coach at Versailles, leading the program to its first ever district runner-up finish in 2021. Ollison previously was the head baseball coach at Benton County R-IX in Warsaw, Mo. in 2016 as well as the head baseball coach at Greenridge High, where he took a team that had won just four games in 2013 and led the program to district runner-up finishes in 2014 and 2015.
 
Now in her fourth year as the head coach of the Lincoln women's basketball team, Mize has helped build an up-and-coming team that competes night-in and night-out in the toughest conference in NCAA Division II. Last season, she directed the Blue Tigers to their best conference record since 2014-15 while, in 2021-22, Mize led the program to its best start in four seasons. In her first year leading the program, Mize directed a Blue Tiger squad that excelled at forcing turnovers, as LU created an average of 16 takeaways per game, the second-most in the MIAA.
 
Mize spent the previous two years as the head coach at Central Florida College, where she led the Patriots to 31 victories and a berth in the FCSAA State/NJCAA District tournament.  Mize took over a program that had won just eight games and increased its win total each season, improving to 12 wins in 2018-19 and a 19-victory campaign in 2019-20.