At Morehead, Ashton Feldhaus takes the ‘Feldhaus coaching tree’ to new heights
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ashton Feldhaus became Morehead State's head coach at age 29, one year off her goal.
- Feldhaus emphasizes a European-influenced, positionless playing style built on versatility
- Morehead State seeks program revival after 37-82 record over past four seasons.
When Ashton Feldhaus was finishing up her college studies at Tennessee Martin, one of her final assignments was to write a letter to her future self and then mail it home.
The letter that Feldhaus, the middle of Karen and Allen Feldhaus Jr.’s three daughters, wrote contained an audacious career goal: To become an NCAA Division I women’s basketball head coach by the age of 28.
“I mailed it to Mom and Dad, and I didn’t think much of it,” Ashton Feldhaus says.
This past March, Feldhaus accepted the women’s hoops head coaching position at Morehead State.
At the time, she was 29 — one year later than she had projected.
“It was funny, when I got hired at 29, I was like, ‘Not that,’” Feldhaus says. “I was disappointed. I was like, ‘I missed it by a year.’”
Feldhaus, now 30, will be one of the more intriguing figures in Kentucky college basketball in the coming seasons.
She carries the last name of Kentucky high school basketball coaching royalty. Her grandfather, Allen Feldhaus Sr., built Mason County into an enduring boys hoops state power in the 1980s. Her dad, Allen Feldhaus Jr., led Madison Central to the 2013 boys state title. Her uncle, Willie Feldhaus, was a successful boys coach at multiple stops, including Russell County.
Another uncle, Deron Feldhaus, was a key contributor as player as Rick Pitino rebuilt a probation-stricken University of Kentucky men’s basketball program in the early 1990s. A cousin, Jake Feldhaus, will be one of the top boys hoops players in the commonwealth in 2025-26 for Madison Central.
Striking out on her own, Ashton Feldhaus is taking the Feldhaus “family business” — coaching basketball — into NCAA Division I. She aims to revitalize a downtrodden Morehead State program with a playing style and recruiting philosophy that are unorthodox.
“She just has an excitement about her,” Morehead State athletics director Kelly Wells says. “And (it) doesn’t hurt that she has the Feldhaus name that people recognize and know.”
Born to coach
As a little girl, Ashton Feldhaus would, she says, “beg” her dad to let her accompany him to Madison Central boys hoops practices.
“My dad is like, neurotic, about ‘No dribbling in my practice,’” she says. “But I’d be over there on the side trying to do form shooting and not let the ball hit the floor.”
In 2011 as a high school sophomore, Ashton Feldhaus was a standout player on the first Madison Central team in school history to reach the Girls’ Sweet Sixteen. Thirty years earlier, her father had been a star on the first Mason County team to play in a boys state tournament.
During her senior season in 2013, Feldhaus led Madison Central back to the girls state tourney. A 6-foot-2 wing, Feldhaus also had a memorable closing act as a Kentucky high school player. She hit six 3-pointers and scored 20 points to lead the Kentucky All-Stars — captained by Miss Basketball Makayla Epps — to an 84-78 win over the Indiana All-Stars in game one of the annual two-contest summer series between the best hoops seniors from the border states.
After starting her college playing career at Butler, Feldhaus finished at Tennessee Martin.
Though there was never any question what profession she planned to pursue upon graduation, it may have surprised some that her coaching ambition was college, not high school hoops.
“I told her, ‘Ashton, if you ever want to make money, you don’t need to stay in the high school ranks,’” Allen Feldhaus Jr. says. “But she was dead set on (coaching college), anyway. She’s always wanted to be a college coach rather than a high school coach.”
An unconventional approach
Feldhaus began her college coaching career as an assistant at Eckerd College, an NCAA Division II school in St. Petersburg, Florida.
In the five seasons she spent working for Eckerd head man Paul Honsinger, Feldaus was exposed to uncommon methods for winning games. Honsinger runs the Princeton offense and stocks his rosters with European players.
As a head coach, Feldhaus has adopted those practices.
Last season, as a first-year head coach at Missouri Western, Feldhaus had five international players on the roster of a team that went 20-10 and reached the NCAA Division II Tournament.
On the 12-player team Feldhaus has constructed for her first season at Morehead, there are 10 players from Europe — three from Sweden, two from Spain and one each from England, Estonia, Italy, Montenegro and Ukraine.
There are no “guards,” “forwards” or “centers” on Ashton Feldhaus’s roster. All 12 Morehead players are listed as a “shooter.”
Felldhaus says the necessities players need to effectively run the Princeton offense — with its emphasis on cutting and reading and shot-making — inform her affinity for European basketball players.
“They fit what we do,” she says. “It’s ball moving, body moving, high IQ. You have got to be, like, super versatile. ... They’re super fundamental, and that’s kind of how we play.”
Over the previous four seasons, Morehead State — which has never played in a women’s basketball NCAA Tournament — has gone a combined 37-82. So Wells, the MSU AD, was more than receptive to trying a different approach.
“I felt like we needed to kind of blow it up, restore it, regrow it,” Wells says. “I’m super excited about the current status.”
While the basketball legacy of the male side of the Feldhaus family gets abundant attention in Kentucky, the female side is doing all right in hoops, too. Addison Feldhaus, Ashton’s younger sister, is the creative content director for Mark Pope and the UK men’s basketball program.
When Ashton Feldhaus flew home to Kentucky from Missouri Western to be introduced as Morehead State head coach, her mom had a gift waiting for her:
It was the letter Ashton had written in college, vowing to become an NCAA Division I head coach in her 20s, in a frame.
“I wake up every day and I’m like, ‘This is crazy that I get to do this and call it a job,’” Ashton Feldhaus says. “I just love it.”
