News and Notes From Around The Office

As we head into the 2010-11 season, things are beginning to really move quickly around the Athletics Department. It's hard to believe we are just four days from the first real game when women's soccer hosts Cincinnati Sunday at 1 p.m. Remember -- free admission for all home soccer games all year long in celebration of BGSU's 100th Anniversary!

Anyway, we've had a lot of really exciting news over the past couple weeks around here and I thought I'd give my two cents worth on some of them, as well as let you know a couple of things we've got coming up.

1 - BGSU captured the Mid-American Conference Institutional Academic Achievement Award for the 2009-10 school year. That's a mouthful to say that our student-athletes had the highest GPA in the MAC this year. That's an awesome accomplishment and we are proud of the work our student-athletes are doing. We've had so many teams and individual receive academic awards over the summer that it's difficult to keep track of them all. There is no doubt that our athletes are putting in the time and effort to do well in the classroom and in competition.

2 - The women's basketball non-conference schedule came out this week and we're excited about that slate. If you haven't seen it, the big game on the schedule is a home tilt with Vanderbilt. I'm sure Vanderbilt will be fired up to come into Anderson Arena in the final year of The House That Roars to avenge a couple of recent losses to the Falcons. I hope we have a PACKED house for that game and we can show the SEC what real basketball fans are all about!

3 - Speaking of basketball schedules, I've got a men's non-conference schedule sitting in front of me right now. There's still a couple of contracts that have to get the proper signatures before we can release it, but expect that to come out either Friday or next Monday. There's a few new opponents on the slate and, as a teaser, a road game against a Final Four team from a year ago. And that contract is a 2-for-1 meaning that team will come play us in the Stroh Center in 2012. But that's all I can say about that (and maybe more than I should have, but why else would you read all this?)

4 - Along the academic lines, BGSU gymnast Megan Chronister received the Bob James Memorial Award this week, which is a $5,000 post graduate scholarship given to one male and one female in the MAC each year. BGSU has absolutely dominated this award, receiving 12 of the 44 scholarships given out all-time. No other school has had more the seven recipients of the award. In fact, our athletes have been given the scholarship in eight of the past 10 years.

5 - I'm also excited about the start of the men's hockey season in October. We've released the schedule at BGSUFalcons.com and I've had the opportunity to sit and talk with new coach Chris Bergeron on many occasions. If you listen to him talk for any amount of time, you can't help but believe in what he says. I don't know how that will translate into wins and losses this year, and honestly, I don't know that it matters at this point. The biggest thing is for Coach to instill his system and his values into the players and the program and we'll see positive returns soon.