IK Eos Names Justin Berry Head Coach of SBL Dam

I'm delighted to share that IK Eos has appointed Justin Berry as the new head coach of its SBL Dam program ahead of the 2026/27 season. Justin arrives with nine professional seasons as a player across six countries, a Danish 1st Division championship as a head coach, and a real connection to Skåne that goes back many years.

“Eos felt like the right fit from the very start, a club with a high ceiling and a chance to do something new. I want us competing among the top teams in the league.”

Building a coaching career

Justin's coaching career has moved fast. Most recently, he led BK Vejen 1981 in Denmark to a 1st Division championship with a 27-2 record and a promotion to the top league. Last season, he took over Gold Coast Wallabies in Zürich, Switzerland, and guided the team to a 5th-place regular-season finish out of sixteen, leading to an automatic playoff spot. Before that, he spent years running skills clinics across Europe and the US. In 2020 he founded Get Recruited Hoops, a scouting and showcase platform that has since helped place more than 65 international players into American college programs, including Bobi Klintman, who played in the NBA before recently signing with EuroLeague club Virtus Bologna.

As a player, Justin was a genuine journeyman, nine professional seasons across England, the US, Germany, Spain, Iceland and Sweden. He first arrived in Skåne in 2017/18 to play for Trelleborg Pirates and immediately led the entire Superettan in scoring at 23.1 points per game. He returned the following season and posted a double-double average, 18.5 points and 10 rebounds per game.

“So much of coaching at any decent level is being able to navigate personalities, motivate, and empower people to do their best. That's a skill that transfers regardless of who I'm coaching.”

A familiar face in Skåne and Sweden

That connection to Sweden didn't end when he stopped playing. “Sweden's been my longest and most familiar stop on this whole adventure abroad,” Justin says. After his playing days in Trelleborg, he moved into coaching in Stockholm and has kept close ties to Swedish basketball ever since, including running Get Recruited Hoops out of the country and returning regularly to run camps such as Next Level.

That history matters for what comes next. Justin has been clear about wanting to build around Eos's homegrown talent, a philosophy that lines up closely with the direction Eos has been building toward. “Young players have to get real opportunities to play, and earn them, inside an environment that pushes them to grow up fast,” he says. “The challenge is finding the balance between developing that talent and still winning games.”

A transition that feels right

As the outgoing coach after several seasons, I'm glad to be handing over the reins, especially given Justin's continued focus on player development. For Justin, it was Anna Holmberg and Helena Eneroth who made the decision an easy one. “Anna and Helena were people I knew and trusted before this,” he says, “so I felt positive about the club from the beginning, as opposed to going in blind to a new place.” Both have been part of Eos for a long time, with Helena connected to the team for the past five years. Alongside SBL Dam, Justin will also be part of the coaching staff for Eos Damer Utveckling in Basketettan Dam, giving him a hand in developing players across more than one level of the club.

“We'll be smart on offense and tough on defense, some fun stuff that people won't enjoy defending. My last two teams were both the top-ranked defenses in their leagues, so we'll see if that was a coaching thing or a personnel thing.”

The person behind the coach

Away from the gym, Justin describes himself as pretty laid back, someone who takes practices and games seriously but jokes around plenty outside of them. He's into history, traveling and reading, plays pub trivia with his team back home in the US, writes a little on the side, and follows politics and current events closely. “Having interests outside of sports is a big part of who I am,” he says, “even though basketball's been my livelihood for most of my life.”

That balance of focus on the court and warmth off it is part of what makes him such a good fit here. This will be Justin's first season leading Eos, and we are all excited to have him as part of the Eos family!