Latest Newsletter From Cal’s Director Of Athletics
Dear Friend of Cal Athletics,
I write right this moment on a historic day, one that everybody at Cal Athletics has been eagerly anticipating for months. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the enactment of Title IX, the historic laws that prevented intercourse discrimination in instructional applications, together with sports activities. We plan on honoring and accelerating Title IX with a year-long celebration, starting right this moment with this instructional and commemorative video to kick off our programming.
We have a lot deliberate over the subsequent 12 months to honor Title IX – options, movies, in-game actions, and far, rather more. We sit up for celebrating collectively – as a Cal Family.
The closing stretch of the 2021-22 athletic season gave us a lot to get enthusiastic about. Our males’s rowing staff – led by 2022 Cal Athletics Hall of Fame inductee and Pac-12 Coach of the Year Scott Frandsen – received its 18th IRA National Championship, and within the course of gave Cal Athletics its 100th all-time staff nationwide title. We plan on celebrating this hallowed milestone later within the 12 months. Furthermore, Camryn Rogers cemented her place as one among our all-time greats by successful her third consecutive NCAA championship within the hammer throw. Camryn has been an unimaginable consultant for our division and college, and we want her nicely as she now strikes on having graduated within the spring. Earlier this month, Nikolaos Papanikolaou received the Cutino Award as the highest participant in NCAA water polo. The award is known as after Peter J. Cutino, Cal’s all-time winningest coach in males’s water polo. Congrats to Papa! Kudos additionally to trace & discipline head coach Robyne Johnson for being named the USTFCCCA West Region Women’s Coach of the Year and Mohamad Saatara for incomes Men’s and Women’s Assistant Coach of the Year accolades.
Our girls’s water polo staff competed on the NCAA Championship on the University of Michigan and superior to the semifinals – the staff has now certified for the NCAA Championship eight occasions since 2010 and reached at the least the semifinals every time. Our girls’s tennis staff superior to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen whereas our seashore volleyball staff went to the NCAA Championship for the primary time in program historical past!
We proceed to have fantastic news on the educational entrance. The newest NCAA Academic Progress Rate information that was launched earlier this month confirmed that we had our second-best one-year rating ever at 989. Overall, we matched a college document with 16 applications having excellent one-year scores of 1,000. We additionally had 9 applications document multi-year scores of 1,000 – one off the college document. Men’s basketball confirmed a 14-point enchancment and matched its all-time excessive with a 97, whereas soccer improved by three factors during the last set of knowledge with a 975, 4 factors off its document.
I’m thrilled to welcome Markeisha Everett to our staff as our Marketing & Communications Officer. Markeisha has intensive expertise in management roles at Power Five colleges akin to Georgia Tech, West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Missouri. She involves us most just lately from Saint Joseph’s in Philadelphia, the place she served as Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Relations. She will be part of our staff on the finish of this month.
It was fantastic to have fun the achievements of our graduating Golden Bears final month, as we welcomed over 200 student-athletes to our alumni neighborhood – their experiences and alternatives as student-athletes have been made doable due to the help of so many – coaches, directors, donors, alumni and lots of extra who’ve generously given of their time and treasure to help their journey.
Following basic graduation, we hosted our annual Student-Athlete Graduation Reception within the University Club. This occasion is a part of the official send-off from Cal Athletics, as we have fun our student-athletes’ achievements. It was an excellent alternative for us to acknowledge the educational and athletic success achieved by our graduating senior student-athletes. I sit up for seeing them start the subsequent leg of their journey and return to campus subsequent fall as a part of our Golden Bear alumni community!
Last month, Coach Wilcox and I traveled right down to Southern California for a number of engagement occasions and visits with passionate Cal Alumni! The majority of the conversations have been centered round Cal Football and the state of faculty soccer. NIL, the switch portal, soccer funding, the upcoming season, and commencement success charges have been high of thoughts. Coach Wilcox continues to impress in these settings and we have obtained unimaginable suggestions from our constituents. We are totally dedicated to having a presence in Southern California, and we’ll proceed to go to the area as usually as doable.
I’d additionally wish to share that we have been proud to honor Alex Morgan Carrasco with the Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement by Young Alumni on the Berkeley Charter Gala! Head girls’s soccer coach Neil McGuire accepted the award in her absence as she is in season with the National Women’s Soccer League!
We could not be extra excited to start out our Coaches Caravan in Sacramento on June twenty ninth at Track 7 Brewing! We welcome you to hitch fellow Cal followers and supporters to listen to from our head coaches and management whereas having fun with gentle bites and drinks. The Caravan is then heading to Lake Tahoe, Orange County, Los Angeles, and Lafayette. Space is restricted, so be sure to RSVP if you’re planning to attend. We cannot wait to see you there!
Also in May, we had over 20 student-athletes and employees attend the 2022 Black Student-Athlete Summit in Houston. Led by Associate Athletics Director for DEIBJ Dr. Ty-Ron Douglas and our DEIBJ Director of Operations & Engagement Bobby Thompson, our contingent participated in workshops, instructional empowerment periods, skilled improvement actions and networking alternatives. A particular congratulations to Bobby for being named the Black Student-Athlete Summit Co-Administrator of the Year! Our group that attended was the second-most of any Pac-12 faculty. Dr. Douglas and his employees proceed to have interaction each member of our division, and inclusiveness and belonging stays on the forefront of every thing that we do.
I wish to give a particular nod to Herb Benenson, the longtime director of our athletic communications workplace who retired on May 27 after 32 years at Cal. Herb has been an absolute rock for our division and has helped us easily navigate the nice occasions and the difficult ones. We want him nicely as he enters this new chapter of his life. Thank you, Herb!
It was gratifying to see our girls’s basketball and girls’s soccer groups work with Urban Tilth to associate with different neighboring communities to beautify the close by Richmond Greenway as a part of an Earth Day celebration. Jessie Stewart, the Director of Community Engagement & Strategic Partnerships for the Cameron Institute, helped arrange the occasion.
I’m additionally extremely happy with our girls’s basketball program for successful the 2022 Pac-12 Sportsmanship Award. In a real signal of humanity, head coach Charmin Smith and the Bears agreed to permit Oregon State’s Andrea Aquino to attain an uncontested layup to start their sport on February 20. Aquino has a medical situation that prevented her from taking part in for the Beavers, and her basket towards us have been her solely profession factors.
Have an excellent summer season, and prepare for an unimaginable fall. Go Bears!
Jim Knowlton
Director of Athletics
