MANKATO — One of the area’s best jump shots in the last decade is now passing his knowledge on and gaining valuable coaching experience in the process with the Minnesota State Mavericks men’s basketball team.

Springfield High School’s all-time leading scorer (3,382 points), a Minnesota Mr. Basketball Finalist and 2019 Springfield grad Isaac Fink finished up his final year of playing college basketball at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2024 with 1,828 career points (13.8 ppg) and 748 rebounds (5.7 rpg).

The 6-4 guard is now putting his basketball passion into coaching as a graduate assistant coach with the Mavs. Coaching is an interest Fink developed at a young age from his dad.

“Playing in the same conference [Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference] and having pretty good success in this conference, they’ve known of me since high school and knew me through college and I’ve always just wanted to become a coach ever since my dad was a coach when I was little,” Fink said. “Since I was 5 years old, I was drawing up plays in a notebook, so i knew I wanted to get into college coaching at some point and I just felt like this was just the perfect connection.”

Now Fink is easing his way into the coaching scene with the Mavericks under head coach Matt Margenthaler.

“This coaching staff from top to bottom, coach Margenthaler, he’s been a great mentor for me,” Fink said. “And learning from a National Championship-reigning head coach, how many people get to say that they do that?”

A graduate assistant coach is a position that many players after college accept if they’re unsure whether or not they want to continue pursuing coaching in their future. They then learn the ropes with a college team for a year or two.

“You get to do scouting, recruiting, all the different things college coaches get to do,” Fink said. “Game operations, road operations, all of that, and you kind of figure out if it’s made for you while getting your master’s. I’m getting my master’s in education right now.

“It’s a one-year plan [as grad assistant], but I can stay here for two. I really love it here. As grad assistant, I get to do a ton of things. I get to help a lot with the scouting, I get to present in front of the team. The role varies with which team you’re on, but this one with this amazing coaching staff that I have has blessed me with a lot of responsibilities.”

Being the young coach on staff, Fink has been able to get a little more active at times in practice with the players like in the fall of 2024. Despite this, he’s happy to take a step back and enter coaching mode full time.

“I am the younger guy on staff so early on in the fall, we had some injuries, so to make it even numbers I suited up,” Fink said. “I will say for the first 20 minutes I would say I was one of the top two to three best players out there, but once that 20-minute mark hit, man, fatigue catches up to you quickly and I think I fell to the bottom of the totem pole pretty quick [laughs]. It was fun to be out there again.

“At the same time, I had opportunities to go play overseas and I was talking to different agents, but I was ready for my playing career to be over and get into this new coaching role. So it was fun to play in the fall, but I’ve fully transitioned into coach mode now and just trying to help our younger guys and show them what it takes to be successful and get them different nuggets so that they can continue to improve their game more so than me getting out there and playing with the guys still.”

Away from the Mavericks, Fink keep his free time busy with the basketball training business BegrEAT Training.

“I live in North Mankato and then I have a training business called BegrEAT Training,” Fink said. “I do that with our assistant coach [Karson Arrenholz] here and then Malik Willingham from last year’s team as well. We train people around the area, we go to schools and do group workouts and that’s kind of like our main thing. So I coach here at MSU and with the BegrEAT basketball, that’s kind of our side thing.”

Fink trains young talent from all around with BegrEAT Training and he recently got done working with Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s sophomore Morgan Mathiowetz, who just joined her big sister, Madison, as just the second girls player in Knights history to pass 2,000 career points.

“She’s unbelievably talented and when you’re working with players like that, you feel like, as a trainer, you can try new things out and challenge them,” Fink said. “That’s one of my favorite things to do, so I had a blast working with Morgan. She’s doing extremely well. I don’t take credit for that, she’s that good already. … I think Morgan’s going to pass Madi [in career points], too, and I didn’t think I’d get beat by anyone within 30 minutes of me and now I’ve got two sisters beating me, so I don’t know why I’m helping her [laughs].”

The Mavericks currently sit 13-8 overall on the season and 9-4 in the conference. They will travel to take on Concordia-St. Paul at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.