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TO APRIL 2026 · the fourth title 2024; the Curless appointment 27 April 2026
The girls' program's roll is counted by its own athletic department: New Prairie's girls won a Class 3A sectional championship in 2024, finishing 20–6 — and when the program's coaching office turned over in the spring of 2026, the South Bend Tribune reported the athletic director Mark McBride's framing, that he believed the new coach could lead the team "to their fifth sectional title in program history": four titles stand won as the program itself counts them, the 2024 title among them, the other three's years not itemized in the sources read (a residue item in the note; settler the IHSAA girls' sectional roll and the program's record). The transition prints as a transition: Aimee Litka, whose six seasons closed 58–78, resigned on 2 April 2026; on 27 April 2026 the school hired Ryan Curless as head coach — the seventh head coach since 2000 and the fifth of this decade, by the paper's count — with Shauna Tewell, the school's flag-football coach and a New Prairie alumna, as his lead assistant. Curless holds the office as of November 2026, before his first season; nothing in this section prints him as anything more. The paper's closing measure of the program he inherits is carried whole: only two winning seasons in the last twenty-two. The boys' basketball roll, for both the old school and the new, stands in the frame article's gap — the IHSAA's boys' sectional list is its settler, unread for these names in the sources reached.
Sources:
- South Bend Tribune, 28 April 2026 — the Litka resignation (2 April 2026; 58–78 in six seasons), the Curless appointment (27 April 2026), the seventh-coach-since-2000 count, the "fifth sectional title in program history" framing by Athletic Director Mark McBride, Tewell's assistant role, and the two-winning-seasons measure.
- The 2024 sectional title and 20–6 finish as reported in the Tribune's account of the program.