SUU Athletics History Layout 1

SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY TTHUNDERBIRDHUNDERBIRD NNEWSEWS MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE, 202 HARRIS CENTER, CEDAR CITY, UTAH 84720 NEIL GARDNER, DIRECTOR OF ATHLETIC MEDIA RELATIONS / KYLE COTTAM, ASST. DIR., / BOBBY ALWORTH, ASST. DIR. SUU Athletics History and Highlights Southern Utah University’s athletics history rests on a century-old tradition of sports excellence dating back to the 1890s when the institution was a small frontier college in the American west. Initially known as Branch Normal School (BNS), the institution became Branch Agricultural College (BAC) in 1913, College of Southern Utah (CSU) in 1953, Southern Utah State College (SUSC) in 1969 and Southern Utah University (SUU) in 1990. The institution sponsored athletic competition from its beginnings, offering basketball and track and field to give its students the opportunity for athletic competition, then adding football in 1914. From 1897 to 1923 the institution competed at the high school level, claiming two state basketball titles and one track & field title along the way. In 1923 BAC began sponsoring men’s basketball at the junior college level while continuing to offer high school-level competition. It joined the Intermountain Collegiate Athletic Conference that year, along with six other Utah and Idaho schools, and soon thereafter began sponsoring other collegiate-level sports, moving football to the collegiate level in 1928 and offering track & field, tennis and baseball in the 1930s. Boxing and wrestling were added in 1946 with cross country and golf added to the offerings in subsequent years. BAC won four straight ICAC basketball championships from 1928-1931, with another coming in 1934. The school also claimed the ICAC football title in 1931. In 1946 BAC qualified for the Western States Basketball Tournament and finished fourth and in 1952 it won the tournament to advance to the National Junior College Tournament, where it finished sixth. Baseball made a name for itself in the middle of the 20th Century, winning ICAC championships in 1947, 1952, 1962 and 1963, with the 1963 squad advancing to the Junior College World Series, where it placed third. In the fall of 1963 the school, then known as College of Southern Utah, moved to four-year competition and by 1967 it had affiliated itself with the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. In 1968 the school began sponsoring women’s intercollegiate athletics and in 1970, as Southern Utah State, the school’s women’s programs began an affiliation with the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Over the next decade SUSC would expand its women’s offerings to include softball, volleyball, basketball, tennis, gymnastics, track & field and cross country. Rick Traasdahl, an offensive lineman on the SUU football team, became the school’s first four-year all-American in 1965. SUSC claimed three RMAC baseball titles, one men’s golf title and one men’s basketball title in the 1970s. In 1978 the RMAC began sponsoring women’s sports and SUU’s volleyball program jumped on the opportunity to compete for conference championships, promptly winning seven straight RMAC titles, from 1976 to 1982, with a fourth-place NAIA finish in 1981. Between 1980 and 1988 SUSC claimed two RMAC baseball and four RMAC softball championships, with the softball team finishing fifth, seventh and 11th at the NAIA national tournament. SUU also won a pair of RMAC golf championships in the ‘80s, in 1984 and 1985. SUSC joined the NCAA as a provisional member in 1986, keeping dual memberships in the NCAA and NAIA for two years and competing as an independent in all men’s sports but football, which joined the Western Football Conference. In 1988 SUSC became a full member of the NCAA, with all its programs except football competing at the Division I level. Football competed at Division II until 1993 when it moved to I-AA and helped form the American West Conference (AWC). In 1994 women’s tennis, men’s and women’s basketball and the track & field and cross country programs from the school now known as Southern Utah University became affiliated with the AWC. SUU’s men’s and women’s basketball teams went undefeated in league play in 1994-95 , claiming both the regular-season and post-season tournament champi- SPORTS INFORMATION PHONES: 435-586-7752/7753/7758 SPORTS INFORMATION FAX: 435-865-8037 onships. The women defended their regular-season and tournament championships the following year, while the men claimed the AWC tournament title. SUU also claimed the 1995 men’s cross country championship. Following the 1995-96 season the AWC disbanded and SUU competed as an independent in all its sports until 1997, when it joined the Mid-Continent Conference, later to become The Summit League, with football and gymnastics remain- ing independent. Football later became a charter member of the Great West Conference in 2004 while Gymnastics helped form the Western Gymnastics Conference before being invited into the Western Athletic Conference as an affiliate member in 2006. SUU’s first Mid-Con title came in the fall of 1997, when its men won the cross country championship. That winter the women claimed the indoor track & field title and in the spring the women and men swept the conference’s outdoor track & field titles. That first year began a run of dominance for SUU’s track & field – and particularly its cross country – teams, as the Thunderbird thin-clads went on to claim 28 combined conference championships over the next decade, including eight women’s and eight men’s cross country titles. In 1999 Natalie Gibson became SUU’s first NCAA national qualifier in track, earning a trip to the national meet in the 400-meter hurdles. The Thunderbirds earned a trip to their first appearance in the NCAA cross country meet in 1999 after placing first at the NCAA District Championship. Jess Baumgartner capped the program’s 10-year run in 2006 when he became SUU’s first NCAA cross country all-American after finishing third at the national championship meet. Men’s golf claimed a share of the Mid-Con championship in the spring of 1999, only to finish second in a tie-breaker, the first of four second-place finishes in a 10 year period. That same year football won the first of two national rushing championships, and in 2000 quarterback Matt Cannon was a consensus first-team all-American at the NCAA Division I-AA (now FCS) level, as well as its first recipient of the National Football Foundation Post-Graduate Scholarship. In the spring of 2001 SUU’s men’s basketball team claimed a share of the Mid-Con’s regular-season title and went on to win the tournament championship, earning the program’s first trip to the NCAA basketball tournament. That year Jeff Monaco was named the Mid-Con Player of the Year and was named the school’s first Division I basketball All-American after earning honorable-mention honors from the Associated Press. In the fall of 2001 SUU began competing in women’s soccer. It was the first of three women’s sports to be added dur- ing the decade, along with women’s golf, which began competing in the fall of 2007 and volleyball, which returned to competition after a 20-year hiatus, in 2009. Softball won the Mid-Continent Conference regular-season title in 2003, beginning a streak of four straight championships. In 2006 the team advanced to the NCAA tournament after claiming its first conference tournament title, then returned to the NCAA tourney as the conference tournament champion in 2007. Southern Utah’s gymnastics squad started making regular trips to the NCAA post-season in 1991 when it sent two individuals on to compete at the Midwest Regional. Thunderbird gymnasts have been represented in either at-large or team berths in the post-season every year since. SUU’s gymnasts have also distinguished themselves in the classroom, claiming 11 Division I academic national championships since 1994 and never finishing lower than third. In 1995 Angie Gunnell became SUU’s first competitor at the NCAA gymnastics national championships, with multiple athletes following in her footsteps. Elise Wheeler became SUU’s first gymnastics all-American in 2009, when she earned the award in three separate events. SUU’s women’s tennis team earned a spot in the Mid-Con tournament for the first time in 1998 and has qualified for the four-team affair eight times, including five of the last six. Although the Thunderbirds have never won the tournament they finished second in 2005 and 2008. The Thunderbird golf team has had two players advance to the NCAA post-season in the past six years and baseball has played for the Summit League championship five times since joining the league in 1997. In all, Southern Utah has had 48 all-Americans in football since 1967, including 30 since the team moved to NCAA competition in 1986, with Trevor Ward and Tysson Poots earning consensus honors last year. In the past week SUU has had two more highlights, as Jamie Smith was named the 2010 Summit League Championship MVP after winning the 6K conference meet in a league season-best time of 21:17 and the Thunderbird football team clinched it’s first-ever Great West Conference championship with a 55-24 win at UC Davis. – SUU –.

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