Trav Weighs In

Minnesota State ranked 4th in last year's Directors' Cup
standings.  The Mavericks expect similar results this year.

What a difference a year can make. It’s that time of year again, and there is a certain buzz around campus, especially in athletics. The 2012-13 academic year was nothing short of amazing and I was truly fortunate to be a part of such an exciting year.

As my last, first day of school has come and gone I sit here and reflect on my last seven years of schooling, more specifically the last five years that I have worked in college athletics. I received my undergraduate degree from Black Hills State University and worked in the athletic department during its transition from an NAIA school to an NCAA Division II institution prior to attending MSU to pursue master’s degree.

I have seen hundreds of college sporting events around the country and I can say that I’m truly proud to be a Maverick. The support system that MSU has in its athletic department from the top down is incomparable to most other Division II institutions, as is the support staff and athletes themselves. There is something behind the term “Maverick Pride."

It’s the pride in succeeding on and off of the field of competition. Not only did Minnesota State finish fourth in the directors cup standings last year (the award given to the most successful Division II school), but it also had 95 student-athletes honored with the fifth annual Division II Athletic Directors Association Academic Achievement Awards for the 2012-13 school year.

It is for these reasons that there is great anticipation within the greater Mankato area for the 2013-14 athletic seasons.

Here is a snippet of what is to come. The women’s soccer team comes off of a successful year with a deep run in the NCAA tournament and is under the direction of first-year head coach Brian Bahl. The volleyball team qualified for the 2012 conference tournament and returns a very strong defensive backcourt and is looking to improve on some of its highlights from a season ago, which includes defeating the six-time national champion Concordia-St. Paul. Who could forget about the football team, which was one game away from competing for a national title.

MSU hosted 10 home football games last year, there are many schools that don't host 10 home football games in a two year span and wide receiver Adam Thielen is currently battling for a roster spot with the Minnesota Vikings after coming off of a very successful Maverick playing career.

Being a South Dakota native, I have never been exposed to hockey, but that is another great example of Maverick Pride. It was a team that had a new coach, new ideas, new systems and ended up having one of its best years, qualifying for the national tournament where it fell to the fifth-rated team from Miami (Ohio) in a regional tournament game played in Toledo. The success they had on the ice also helped multiple student-athletes get that much closer to their dream of playing professional hockey - notably team captain Eriah Hayes signed with the San Jose Sharks.

So as you can see from the win column from all of the MSU athletic teams, it is great to be a Maverick, but being a Maverick goes far beyond the field of competition, it’s also about being great in the community and the classroom.

I encourage you to continue to support these amazing young adults in all three phases and recognize their achievements on and off of the field.

Travis Langer • Minnesota State Athletic Communications Graduate Assistant

Random Thoughts: Walking on Sunshine

Nope.  Not another thought or post regarding weather-related issues our spring sports have battled in 2012-13.

Instead, a bevy of items for your perusal.

Senior tennis stand-out Brandi Dohmen was presented with
this year's Georgene Brock Award as Minnesota State's top
senior female student-athlete. Pictured with Dohmen is Bob
Bresnahan of Federated Insurance (MAA corporate partner)
and Kevin Buisman, MSU's Director of Athletics.

The 27th annual Maverick Achievement Awards Dinner took place last Sunday in the CSU Ballroom.  In addition to recognizing this year's 58 Maverick Achievement Award recipients (senior student-athletes with cumulative GPAs of 3.0+), awards for the top senior athletes and top senior student-athletes were announced and presented. Over 900 student-athletes have been recognized as Maverick Achievement Award recipients since the program was inaugurated in 1987. Tennis stand-out Brandi Dohmen, who has a 3.98 GPA and is majoring in spanish took home the Georgene Brock Award as the top senior female student-athlete and baseball catcher Ben Keller (4.00 in mechanical engineering) won the Don Buchanan Award as the top senior male student-athlete.

We had a tremendous turn out for the annual spring football game held this past Saturday at historic Blakeslee Stadium. We've also announced the 2013 schedule, which by the way, is just 129 days away from starting.

Following the conclusion of the 2012-13 season, Minnesota State men's hockey Most Valuable Player Eriah Hayes signed a pro contract with the National Hockey League's San Jose Sharks.  The Sharks assigned Hayes to their American Hockey League affiliate in Worcester (Mass.), where he tallied three goals and had an assist in seven games.  With Worcester's season now done and following a short stopover in Mankato, Hayes headed to San Jose where, according to one of the Sharks' PR-dudes "Eriah is on his initial trip to San Jose. He isn't eligible to play, but he will able to get a feel for the organization and the area."

The 19th-rated MSU softball team, which earned a share of this year's Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference regular-season title, begins league postseason play Thursday in Rochester when it plays the winner of St. Cloud State and Mary at 1:30 p.m.  Editor's note - sorry, this is the one time we'll mention weather-related issues - (from the NSIC): "NSIC officials have decided to move the 2013 NSIC Softball Tournament indoors due to the poor weather forecasted in Rochester, Minn.  The games will be moved into the Rochester Community and Technical College Dome for all of Thursday and Friday’s games." 

Currently rated tenth, the Maverick Baseball team has concluded league regular-season action and will close out its regular-season schedule with a trio of nonconference games at Truman State in Kirksville, Mo., this weekend. The Mavericks are 31-8 overall and will finish second in NSIC regular-season standings with a 20-4 mark. The league postseason tournament is set for May 8-11 in St. Cloud.  Head coach Matt Magers reached the 200-win plateau April 27th when MSU claimed a 15-7 victory at Wayne State (Neb.). Magers, who is in his fifth season in charge of the Mavericks, started his career with a 38-win season in 2009. Then came 44 wins in 2010, 40 wins in 2011 and then 51 wins last year.

A short list of some of the great names of former MSU student-athletes.  Some of the favorites include:  Kevin Welp (baseball), Adrian Battles (football), Kreg Kapitan (football), Elisha McSweeney (basketball), Fritz Polka (baseball), Sarah Schneekloth (women's hockey), Heidi Schnagl (volleyball), Katija Opitz (women's soccer), Randi Warhol (women's soccer), Shelly LaFave (softball), Ronna Puck (softball), Brian Klinkhammer (men's hockey) and Baylor Dieter (men's hockey).

The Maverick men's golf team had a string of consecutive trips to the NCAA postseason come to an end at 11 when it failed to qualify for this year's go-round.  MSU, which finished second at this year's NSIC tournament, had qualified every year beginning in 2001-02 through 2011-12.  MSU senior Greg Werner was invited to this year's regional tournament which is scheduled for May 6-8 in Kenosha, Wis.

Lastly, the MSU Reporter ran a commemorative issue this past Tuesday with an eight-page insert highlighting the 35-year coaching career of Mark Schuck.  Schuck, who is retiring following the end of this year's track and field season, is a Nicollet, Minn., native who went to school here and basically never left.  A couple of the stories in the insert mentioned a few of Mark's trademark sayings including:

"Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up. Ten percent is staying awake and the last ten percent is putting forth at least a little bit of effort."

"Can we get a discount? We're from a poor Christian school in Minnesota." (to all the restaurant owners on road trips)

"Just do what you did to get to nationals and you'll be an All-American." (words of wisdom to athletes at national competitions)

"The hay is in the barn."

"You can't undo 18 years of bad parenting."

"You don't get anything for losing."

"You've got to be good, and a little bit lucky, but mostly, I don't know...it's magic, I guess." (on convincing outstanding student-athletes to come to MSU)

Quite the character that Coach Schuck.


It's great to be a Maverick!

Comparables

Minnesota State has had varsity men's hockey since the 1969-70 season and has had NCAA Division I hockey since 1996-97.

 

And during the course of its Division I-era, we can point to one MSU team that has made it to the NCAA postseason tournament.  This team, as we talk about quite often, was the team from 2002-03.  That year was memorable for many reasons. 

 

The Mavericks of a decade ago finished with a 20-11-10 mark and ranked second in the final Western Collegiate Hockey Association standings with a 15-6-7 record.  At one point MSU went unbeaten in a school-record 17 straight games. A pair of dynamic forwards from Alberta combined for 128 points and earned All-America honors in Shane Joseph (29 goals, 36 assists for 65 points) and Grant Stevenson (27 goals, 36 assists for 63 points). Captain B.J. Abel, who was named the team's Most Valuable Player at the end of the year, totalled 12-24--36 and four other forwards hit double digits for goals in Cole Bassett (14), Brock Becker (14), Adam Gerlach (13) and Dana Sorenson (12). The MSU blueline corps was solid with veterans Joe Bourne and Pete Runkle anchoring a heady and steady group. And early on the coaching staff, which consisted of head coach Troy Jutting along with assistants Darren Blue and Eric Means, found a goaltending formula that saw Jon Volp play one game one night and Jason Jensen the next. 

 

A nonconference home win and road tie with Nebraska Omaha set up a home WCHA first-round best-of-three play-off series in Mankato with the University of Wisconsin.  The Mavericks won the first game 2-1 before Stevenson's goal at 1:21 of the second overtime period sent the Badgers packing in game two.

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MSU fell in overtime to the University of Minnesota in the first game of the WCHA Final Five, then dropped a 6-4 decision to Minnesota Duluth in the third-place game the following day.  The Mavericks made the 2002-03 tournament as the 16th seed and headed for the East regional in Providence, R.I., for a first-round game against top-seeded Cornell where, led by future National Hockey League stand-outs Matt Moulson and Doug Murray, the Big Red overcame the Mavericks 5-2.

 

A lot of this sounds familiar, in a Back to the Future-kind of way.

 

For example, the long unbeaten streak.  This year's squad, led by first-year head coach Mike Hastings, got off to a pedestrian 3-5-2 start before reeling off a seven-game winning streak. Skill? A trio of forwards in sophomores Matt Leitner (17-30--47) and Jean-Paul Lafontaine (9-26--35) and senior Eriah Hayes (20-16--35) stand atop a scoring chart that boasts an offense that includes a nation-leading 44 power play goals. Secondary scoring abounds with another 11 players in double-digit scoring after the top three. The defensive group has a pair of point producers in Zach Palmquist and Josh Nelson and rangy shut-down types such as Tyler Elbrecht and Brett Stern. And goaltending-wise, the parallel between this year and back then has been that freshman Stephon Williams, the 2012-13 WCHA Goaltending Champion and WCHA Rookie of the Year, has been, not unlike the Volp-Jensen combo of yesteryear, consistently good. All this has led to an unprecented season with a record 24 wins and new heights in the national rankings. 

 

It took three games for the Mavericks to dispatch Nebraska Omaha in a league play-off series played in Mankato in the middle of March. And not unlike 2002-03, the 2012-13 version bowed out in its first game of the WCHA tournament, this time with a loss to the University of Wisconsin. 

 

This weekend the Mavericks will find out where they go for NCAA Regional action. And while there's a sense that there are similarities between this year's team and the one which made the program's first appearance in the NCAA postseason party, this will also signify an opportunity for the guys from the school in southern Minnesota to create a new identity for their hockey program.

 

Can't wait to see how this turns out.

 

It's great to be a Maverick!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get Your Ya Yas Out

Senior wide receiver Adam Thielen helped
lead the Mavericks to a 13-1 record this year.

Some quick catching up to do here as classes wind down and we make the final sprint toward Christmas.

Needless to say, the incredible fall our teams have been experiencing has been soaked in success.

The football team hosted three NCAA play-off games, dispatching Northwest Missouri State and Missouri Western before falling in the national semifinals to Valdosta State (Ga.) this past Saturday. The Mavericks went undefeated, racking up 13 straight wins, before falling to the boys from the Peach State at Blakeslee Stadium.  Historic, indeed.

The women's soccer team, which advanced to the Elite Eight, finished an incredible 17-1-5 on the year.  The Mavericks staged an unbelievable comeback late in the national quarterfinal game at Grand Valley State to send the game into overtime, only to eventually fall in a seven-round shoot-out to the host Lakers.

Character, leadership, family. We heard these words constantly as the teams worked their way through their seasons.  Same thing for the men's cross country team which made it back to the national meet for the first time 2008 and posted a 20th-place finish. The women's cross country team, which made an appearance in the national top twenty poll for the first time in a while this year, finished seventh at the regional meet and with several youngsters leading the way, are trending upward. The Maverick volleyball squad finished 18-11 and spent much of the year in the national top twenty poll. Included was a MSU win over Concordia on September 18th, the program's first win over the eventual national champions since 2002.

And so on it goes with our winter programs now in full swing.  More on those programs the next time, with lots of success there, too, to expound upon.

A few other things we did want to mention.

A big congratulations goes out to softball coach Lori Meyer with the announcement that she has been selected for induction into the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2013.  Meyer, who has been skippering the Mavericks since 1985, has racked up more than 900 wins during her outstanding career.  Simply no one better.

A couple of notes on former Minnesota State football coaches with Jerry Olszewski being named a finalist for the head job at Augustana and Chuck Martin coaching in the NCAA Division I national championship game as a member of the staff at Notre Dame.  Olszewski, who has constructed a 32-18 mark in the last five years as the head coach at St. Olaf, had two stints on the MSU football staff (1993-97 and 1999-02).  Martin was on MSU's staff as a graduate assistant in '92.

It looks like Bemidji State will be looking for a new director of athletics this spring with the announcement that Rick Goeb's contract will not be renewed.

How 'bout this great play by senior forward Eriah Hayes of the Minnesota State men's hockey team. A lot of people thought it might be ESPN Top Ten Plays of the Day worthy.

Lastly, want to point out that more than 25,000 fans attended MSU home events over the course of the past two weekends with Blakeslee Stadium, Taylor Center, Myers Field House, All Seasons Arena and Verizon Wireless Center all hosting Maverick competitions. 

Truly great and proud to be a Maverick the past 14 days.