Aimee Litka Resigns After Six Seasons Leading New Prairie Girls Basketball

When New Prairie captured a sectional championship in 2024, it was the program's first since 2000, a 24-year gap that Aimee Litka sealed shut in her fifth season guiding the Cougars. She resigned this week after six total seasons at the helm, citing a desire to prioritize family and personal commitments following the conclusion of the 2025-26 campaign.

Litka arrived at New Prairie carrying credentials rare for a small-school hire. A state champion as a player at South Bend Saint Joseph in 2005, she brought firsthand knowledge of what it takes to win at Indiana's highest levels. That background informed a coaching philosophy built around hustle and fundamentals, and over six seasons it translated into the program's most significant competitive stretch in more than two decades. The Cougars' upswing under her watch generated renewed community interest, restoring New Prairie as a program Northern Indiana girls basketball circles took seriously.

The 2024 sectional title stands as the clearest marker of that transformation. No Cougar team had won a sectional crown in the 24 years before Litka arrived, and her program's ability to reach and win that round elevated expectations for what New Prairie could accomplish each March. Those expectations now land on whoever the next hire turns out to be.

Timing sharpens the pressure on New Prairie's athletic department. A mid-April opening compresses the calendar in ways a summer vacancy would not: the incoming coach needs to be in place for offseason workouts and summer league commitments, the exact months when player development and roster cohesion are built. In Indiana girls basketball, summer reps frequently determine how ready a program is when the sectional bracket drops.

The school has indicated the search for a replacement is underway. For the Cougars to sustain what Litka built, the next coach will need to move quickly on feeder program relationships and connect with a returning group that reached sectional-contender status under a coach who knew from personal experience what a state championship felt like.