DAVENPORT — Ray Shovlain, who has led the St. Ambrose University men’s basketball program since 1983, will retire at the conclusion of the 2026-27 season, the university announced Oct. 23.
Shovlain enters his final season with 749 career victories and 18 20-win seasons. Under his leadership, the Fighting Bees have made 10 NAIA National Tournament appearances and four Sweet 16 runs, including the program’s first and only trip to the Final Four in 2004, when the team set a school record with 32 wins.
Shovlain’s ties to St. Ambrose go back more than five decades. After leading Clinton St. Mary’s High School to the 1975 Iowa state championship and earning all-state honors, he became a four-year letterman for the Bees and still holds the school’s single-game, season and career assist records. He was inducted into the SAU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1993 and earned his MBA from St. Ambrose in 1982.
Beyond the court, Shovlain has taught in the College of Business, where he was named Professor of the Year in 1989 and 1993. As activity director of the university’s National Youth Sports Program, which serves economically disadvantaged Quad-City youth ages 10 to 16, he helped St. Ambrose earn the 1996 Silvio O. Conte Award as the top NYSP program in the nation. He received the Iowa Basketball Coaches Association’s Paul Maaske Memorial Award in 1989 as the state’s top small-college coach, and in 2026 he was honored with the McMullen Award, the university’s second-highest honor.
