Dear Buffs Fan,
The winter sports seasons are over and spring competition is well under way, signaling the last quarter of the 2015-16 athletic year.
Athletics Complex Expansion Update
We held a gala affair on February for some of the donors who made our Athletics Complex Expansion possible; we announced that evening we had raised over $94.2 million toward our “Drive for 105,” a total that included $28 million for scholarship endowments.
Chris Fowler was gracious enough to return for the event and volunteered the better part of two days speaking to donors, staff, student-athletes and journalism students prior to the black-tie gala. One of ESPN’s long-standing employees, Chris, a 1985 CU graduate, credits his start in CU’s sports information office in the mid-80s and his ability to intern for two Denver television stations for the successes he has achieved today. He shared many stories from both his CU days as well as during his ESPN career and he left in awe of our new facilities – and said as much to the 400 people in attendance at the gala. Read more on Fowler’s visit here.
One of the night’s special moments came when student-athletes from each of our athletic teams took the stage and spoke about what the new facilities and renovations meant to them and their programs.
Our award-winning sports video department produced this video on the expansion project, from the stadium and Dal Ward Center renovations to the construction of the Champions Center and the Indoor Practice Facility. If you haven’t seen it, click here, it’s well worth the six minutes.
The facilities are already capturing the eyes of the nation — the Bleacher Report just recently selected the top 15 indoor football facilities in the nation, and Colorado was among them. Oregon was the only other Pac-12 school included in the publication’s alphabetical listing. See all 15 here. The team has already made great use of the IPF; a reminder that the annual spring game is set for Saturday, April 9 with a Noon start time.
Winter Competition Update
Richard Rokos has coached our ski team to eight NCAA titles in his 26 years as coach, and annually states that the goal is to win. If not on the top of the podium, he always has said finishing second, third or wherever never matters. That’s a great attitude and approach but this year, the stars were just not aligned. Between injuries and ill-times crashes, we were relegated to fifth- fourth- and fourth-place after each of the first three days. However, a great effort by the Nordic teams on the final day, which included four All-America performances, did power CU to a runner-up finish.
Junior Mads Stroem swept the Nordic freestyle and classical titles, becoming the eighth CU athlete (the sixth skier) to win three NCAA titles when adding in the freestyle crown he won as a freshman. Ten different Buffs earned All-America honors with a combined 13 top 10 finishes, upping the total to exactly 300 during Rokos’ tenure as head coach.
The skiers endure some of the most grueling travel of any collegiate sport, yet this year, a record 13 of our Buffs earned National All-Academic Ski Team honors, the sport’s equivalent to Academic All-America – which much tougher standards. Those who make the team have to a minimum 3.50 cumulative grade point average and participate in the regionals. (Six cross country runners made a similar team announced in February.)
Though the season ended with a disappointing loss to Connecticut in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the men’s basketball program enjoyed another fine overall season. Finishing fifth in the Pac-12 in what was a tight conference race throughout (when predicted to do no better than seventh) and then earning a No. 8 seed in the NCAA’s capped a 22-win season.
Despite losing four seniors from this year’s team, most notably Josh Scott and Xavier Talton, the future is bright for Tad Boyle’s program; Neill Woelk summed it up well on CUBuffs.com. Tad has taken his team to the NCAA’s four times in six years (matched only by Arizona, Oregon and UCLA in the conference), and only 10 schools have been invited to the last five championships, CU is the next wave to make it to four.
This was a little under the radar last month because it was released the Friday before the Super Bowl, but Scott was named as one of 10 finalists for the 2016 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award. He averaged 16 points and nine rebounds per game, with one of his best games of his career coming in a 75-72 win over No. 9 Arizona last month. He finished in the top 20 in eight major categories, including eighth in scoring and third in rebounds.
I’d like to thank Governor John Hickenlooper for declaring that March 17 was “Buffs and Rams are Dancing Day,” saluting our men and the CSU women with an official proclamation for being invited to the NCAA postseason. It was a nice gesture considering Denver was hosting first round men’s game the same day and it brought some more attention to the local programs.
Kennedy Leonard had a strong close to her freshman season, earning both Pac-12 freshman player of the week honors and then being named to the Pac-12 All-Freshman Team by both the league coaches and the media. She had big game in our late-season win over California, scoring 23 points and handing out 13 assists. Unfortunately, the team finished with a 7-23 record and it was mutually agreed after the season between myself and head coach Linda Lappe that it was important to go in a different direction.
As I said at the time, we appreciated everything Linda has done for the program. Her student-athletes have done a great job in the classroom, off the court and in the community. Her team’s grade point average rose 50 points, from 2.49 when she took over to 2.99 for the Fall ’15 semester, with the cumulative GPA currently at 3.02, over 40 points higher from the team she inherited. She has been a terrific role model and a great alum of the school.
The indoor track teams wrapped their season by sending five participants to the NCAA championships, earning six All-America honors among them overall (five of which were first-team). Pierce Murphy earned first-team All-America accolades in two events, with senior Morgan Pearson along with sophomores Erin Clark and Kaitlyn Benner all garnering first-team honors in their events. Connor Winter, one of our most active members of our Student-Athletic Advisory Committee, earned second-team honors. In short, they competed in six events and came back with as many first-team honors, quite the achievement.
The women finished fourth in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships (our conference for lacrosse and indoor track, which the Pac-12 does not presently sponsor championships), while the men were 10th. Nineteen different schools in the two western time zones compete in the league.
Spring Competition Underway
The outdoor season was supposed to open last weekend with the Jerry Quiller Classic, but the snowstorm forced cancellation of the event as the teams will now open later this week at the Texas Relays.
It was great to see our lacrosse team open its third year of existence with a big 11-10 win at Denver, which was also a conference win. Sophomore Sarah Brown, who hails from Boulder, won the conference’s defensive player of the week honor for her efforts in the triumph. Ann Elliot’s team is 6-1, with a 2-0 mark in the MPSF. The team is gunning for its first NCAA tournament invitation in just its third year of existence; the only loss to date was to No. 5 Notre Dame on the road. Earlier this week we soundly defeated Marist, 19-4, in preparation for the biggest non-conference game of the season, a battle this Thursday at perennial power Northwestern.
The women’s golf team is ranked No. 21 in the nation and is competing in a big match play tournament this week in San Diego. Anne Kelly’s team had a great runner-up finish earlier this month at the Bay Area Collegiate. Roy Edwards’ men’s golfers, ranked No. 69, will resume action this week at Stanford after a month off; it finished second at Wyoming’s Desert Invitational at Palm Desert its last time out.
The women’s tennis team recorded a big win over No. 59 Arizona and stands 6-9 on the season. It has four matches coming up in a 10-day window against programs all in the top 50, including a visit to No. 1 California this Saturday. Nicole Kenneally’s Buffs will then host UCLA and USC on April 1 and 3, respectively, so if you can come out and support the Buffs, weather-permitting both matches will be at South Campus courts.
Our record against Division I competition currently stands at 462-166-5, a 73.4 winning percentage, and we were 20th in the first winter standings in the Learfield Director’s Cup (the sixth Pac-12 school).
Two of our volleyball players have been selected for national team participation this summer. Junior-to-be Gabby Simpson is one of 12 members on the USA Volleyball Collegiate National Training Team that will train and compete in Europe from July 6-16. Sophomore transfer Alexa Smith, a Colorado Springs native who has returned to her home state after playing one year at Purdue, will represent the Buffs as a member of the USA Volleyball Collegiate National Team that will tour China. That squad will train and compete in a series of matches from June 18-July 1.
Community Initatives
We’ve partnered with Global Down Syndrome for a new health and wellness program this summer, thanks to a generous donation from the Daniels Fund. Our campus will host both Global Dare to Play Football and Global Dare to Cheer camps in collaboration with our own football and cheer teams. All participants will be paired one-on-one with a one our student-athletes.
Notable
We’re working on future football schedules at present, and will have an announcement soon on one, perhaps two home-and-home series next decade. It’s more complicated than most realize, mainly because almost every school is scheduling anywhere from eight-to-12 years out and it’s often a game of dominoes.
And lastly, the campus administration approved the Sports Governance Center that is being coordinated out of the athletic department and the Champions Center by Roger Pielke. Already a popular class in such a short time, Roger brought in Lance Armstrong as a guest speaker to a packed house and he has been quoted in numerous articles around the world on issues facing sports, most notably the changes at the top of the FIFA hierarchy.
The grand opening and celebrations may have come and gone, but we’re still working hard to complete the “Drive For 105.” As always, you can find out more about our Sustainable Excellence Initiative by visiting www.cusustainableexcellence.com, or visit the Buff Club pages at www.cubuffclub.com if you’d like to explore other ways to support us. And you can always call and visit with any of our Buff Club staff at 303-492-2200.
Collaboration and Unity,
Rick George
Athletic Director
The winter sports seasons are over and spring competition is well under way, signaling the last quarter of the 2015-16 athletic year.
Athletics Complex Expansion Update
We held a gala affair on February for some of the donors who made our Athletics Complex Expansion possible; we announced that evening we had raised over $94.2 million toward our “Drive for 105,” a total that included $28 million for scholarship endowments.
Chris Fowler was gracious enough to return for the event and volunteered the better part of two days speaking to donors, staff, student-athletes and journalism students prior to the black-tie gala. One of ESPN’s long-standing employees, Chris, a 1985 CU graduate, credits his start in CU’s sports information office in the mid-80s and his ability to intern for two Denver television stations for the successes he has achieved today. He shared many stories from both his CU days as well as during his ESPN career and he left in awe of our new facilities – and said as much to the 400 people in attendance at the gala. Read more on Fowler’s visit here.
One of the night’s special moments came when student-athletes from each of our athletic teams took the stage and spoke about what the new facilities and renovations meant to them and their programs.
Our award-winning sports video department produced this video on the expansion project, from the stadium and Dal Ward Center renovations to the construction of the Champions Center and the Indoor Practice Facility. If you haven’t seen it, click here, it’s well worth the six minutes.
The facilities are already capturing the eyes of the nation — the Bleacher Report just recently selected the top 15 indoor football facilities in the nation, and Colorado was among them. Oregon was the only other Pac-12 school included in the publication’s alphabetical listing. See all 15 here. The team has already made great use of the IPF; a reminder that the annual spring game is set for Saturday, April 9 with a Noon start time.
Winter Competition Update
Richard Rokos has coached our ski team to eight NCAA titles in his 26 years as coach, and annually states that the goal is to win. If not on the top of the podium, he always has said finishing second, third or wherever never matters. That’s a great attitude and approach but this year, the stars were just not aligned. Between injuries and ill-times crashes, we were relegated to fifth- fourth- and fourth-place after each of the first three days. However, a great effort by the Nordic teams on the final day, which included four All-America performances, did power CU to a runner-up finish.
Junior Mads Stroem swept the Nordic freestyle and classical titles, becoming the eighth CU athlete (the sixth skier) to win three NCAA titles when adding in the freestyle crown he won as a freshman. Ten different Buffs earned All-America honors with a combined 13 top 10 finishes, upping the total to exactly 300 during Rokos’ tenure as head coach.
The skiers endure some of the most grueling travel of any collegiate sport, yet this year, a record 13 of our Buffs earned National All-Academic Ski Team honors, the sport’s equivalent to Academic All-America – which much tougher standards. Those who make the team have to a minimum 3.50 cumulative grade point average and participate in the regionals. (Six cross country runners made a similar team announced in February.)
Though the season ended with a disappointing loss to Connecticut in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the men’s basketball program enjoyed another fine overall season. Finishing fifth in the Pac-12 in what was a tight conference race throughout (when predicted to do no better than seventh) and then earning a No. 8 seed in the NCAA’s capped a 22-win season.
Despite losing four seniors from this year’s team, most notably Josh Scott and Xavier Talton, the future is bright for Tad Boyle’s program; Neill Woelk summed it up well on CUBuffs.com. Tad has taken his team to the NCAA’s four times in six years (matched only by Arizona, Oregon and UCLA in the conference), and only 10 schools have been invited to the last five championships, CU is the next wave to make it to four.
This was a little under the radar last month because it was released the Friday before the Super Bowl, but Scott was named as one of 10 finalists for the 2016 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award. He averaged 16 points and nine rebounds per game, with one of his best games of his career coming in a 75-72 win over No. 9 Arizona last month. He finished in the top 20 in eight major categories, including eighth in scoring and third in rebounds.
I’d like to thank Governor John Hickenlooper for declaring that March 17 was “Buffs and Rams are Dancing Day,” saluting our men and the CSU women with an official proclamation for being invited to the NCAA postseason. It was a nice gesture considering Denver was hosting first round men’s game the same day and it brought some more attention to the local programs.
Kennedy Leonard had a strong close to her freshman season, earning both Pac-12 freshman player of the week honors and then being named to the Pac-12 All-Freshman Team by both the league coaches and the media. She had big game in our late-season win over California, scoring 23 points and handing out 13 assists. Unfortunately, the team finished with a 7-23 record and it was mutually agreed after the season between myself and head coach Linda Lappe that it was important to go in a different direction.
As I said at the time, we appreciated everything Linda has done for the program. Her student-athletes have done a great job in the classroom, off the court and in the community. Her team’s grade point average rose 50 points, from 2.49 when she took over to 2.99 for the Fall ’15 semester, with the cumulative GPA currently at 3.02, over 40 points higher from the team she inherited. She has been a terrific role model and a great alum of the school.
The indoor track teams wrapped their season by sending five participants to the NCAA championships, earning six All-America honors among them overall (five of which were first-team). Pierce Murphy earned first-team All-America accolades in two events, with senior Morgan Pearson along with sophomores Erin Clark and Kaitlyn Benner all garnering first-team honors in their events. Connor Winter, one of our most active members of our Student-Athletic Advisory Committee, earned second-team honors. In short, they competed in six events and came back with as many first-team honors, quite the achievement.
The women finished fourth in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships (our conference for lacrosse and indoor track, which the Pac-12 does not presently sponsor championships), while the men were 10th. Nineteen different schools in the two western time zones compete in the league.
Spring Competition Underway
The outdoor season was supposed to open last weekend with the Jerry Quiller Classic, but the snowstorm forced cancellation of the event as the teams will now open later this week at the Texas Relays.
It was great to see our lacrosse team open its third year of existence with a big 11-10 win at Denver, which was also a conference win. Sophomore Sarah Brown, who hails from Boulder, won the conference’s defensive player of the week honor for her efforts in the triumph. Ann Elliot’s team is 6-1, with a 2-0 mark in the MPSF. The team is gunning for its first NCAA tournament invitation in just its third year of existence; the only loss to date was to No. 5 Notre Dame on the road. Earlier this week we soundly defeated Marist, 19-4, in preparation for the biggest non-conference game of the season, a battle this Thursday at perennial power Northwestern.
The women’s golf team is ranked No. 21 in the nation and is competing in a big match play tournament this week in San Diego. Anne Kelly’s team had a great runner-up finish earlier this month at the Bay Area Collegiate. Roy Edwards’ men’s golfers, ranked No. 69, will resume action this week at Stanford after a month off; it finished second at Wyoming’s Desert Invitational at Palm Desert its last time out.
The women’s tennis team recorded a big win over No. 59 Arizona and stands 6-9 on the season. It has four matches coming up in a 10-day window against programs all in the top 50, including a visit to No. 1 California this Saturday. Nicole Kenneally’s Buffs will then host UCLA and USC on April 1 and 3, respectively, so if you can come out and support the Buffs, weather-permitting both matches will be at South Campus courts.
Our record against Division I competition currently stands at 462-166-5, a 73.4 winning percentage, and we were 20th in the first winter standings in the Learfield Director’s Cup (the sixth Pac-12 school).
Two of our volleyball players have been selected for national team participation this summer. Junior-to-be Gabby Simpson is one of 12 members on the USA Volleyball Collegiate National Training Team that will train and compete in Europe from July 6-16. Sophomore transfer Alexa Smith, a Colorado Springs native who has returned to her home state after playing one year at Purdue, will represent the Buffs as a member of the USA Volleyball Collegiate National Team that will tour China. That squad will train and compete in a series of matches from June 18-July 1.
Community Initatives
We’ve partnered with Global Down Syndrome for a new health and wellness program this summer, thanks to a generous donation from the Daniels Fund. Our campus will host both Global Dare to Play Football and Global Dare to Cheer camps in collaboration with our own football and cheer teams. All participants will be paired one-on-one with a one our student-athletes.
Notable
We’re working on future football schedules at present, and will have an announcement soon on one, perhaps two home-and-home series next decade. It’s more complicated than most realize, mainly because almost every school is scheduling anywhere from eight-to-12 years out and it’s often a game of dominoes.
And lastly, the campus administration approved the Sports Governance Center that is being coordinated out of the athletic department and the Champions Center by Roger Pielke. Already a popular class in such a short time, Roger brought in Lance Armstrong as a guest speaker to a packed house and he has been quoted in numerous articles around the world on issues facing sports, most notably the changes at the top of the FIFA hierarchy.
The grand opening and celebrations may have come and gone, but we’re still working hard to complete the “Drive For 105.” As always, you can find out more about our Sustainable Excellence Initiative by visiting www.cusustainableexcellence.com, or visit the Buff Club pages at www.cubuffclub.com if you’d like to explore other ways to support us. And you can always call and visit with any of our Buff Club staff at 303-492-2200.
Collaboration and Unity,
Rick George
Athletic Director
