2010 Voyages
V
C hr i s tophe r N e w p ort Uni v e rsi t y ’s
oyages a l u m n i m a g a z i n e d 2 010
Mr. 500
Co ac h Woo llu m reaches h isto ric m ile ston e
Right: Bev Vaughan Below: Newly constructed Ratcliffe Gym Opposite page (clockwise from left): 1987 track team; 1987 NCAA national championship trophy; Sheila Trice, second from left, competing
C a p ta i n s Pride: A Look B ac k As CNU athletics gears up for a winning future, it already has much to celebrate.
The following was written by Wayne Block, recenty retired assistant to the athletic director/ communications. He spent 27 years at CNU and will be writing a book about the history of CNU athletics. Sometime next spring he and his wife will be moving to Arizona. Bev Vaughan was visiting the Christopher Newport College (CNC) campus to view the underconstruction Ratcliffe Gym. He was pondering an offer to become the fledgling school’s first basketball coach. As he entered the unfinished locker room, a man appeared, demanding, “What are you doing here?” It was a security guard, protecting the future home of the Captains. Today when Vaughan enters the beautiful Freeman Center, he does so as an honored guest. Little could the former William and Mary basketball star have dreamed of the heights Christopher Newport University would reach in collegiate athletics. What he began in 1967 has blossomed into a 22-sport empire that annually ranks among the top in NCAA Division III.
When Vaughan arrived there were a few athletes competing in track and field and a men’s basketball team — well, a club playing in the Newport News City League. “I never did see them play,” Vaughan notes. But from that beginning he crafted a 204-128 record over 14 seasons and fed directly into the outstanding program of today. From that initial club came the idea for the formation of future varsity sports. “If some students wanted to form a team we said, ‘let’s try it as a club team,’ and if there was still interest we would elevate it to the intercollegiate level,” explains Vaughan. The 1970s were a time of growth for the young athletics program. Men’s tennis and golf began during the 1970-71 school year, just as the college gained four-year status. Women’s basketball began as a
club, gaining varsity status during the 1971-72 season. Previously clubs had been formed for women’s field hockey and golf. Vaughan, still wearing many hats, actually coached men’s tennis for a short time. The first national notoriety hit campus when Carl Farris was named National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) honorable mention All-American in basketball. He became the first of more than 500 CNU studentathletes to attain that status. By decade’s end, men’s soccer and women’s volleyball had joined the Captains’ growing list of sports.
National Prominence The 1980s ushered in Christopher Newport’s first forays into national championship competition.
at h l e t i c s
Edna Davis could have no idea, as was the case with Vaughan, what she was beginning. But in 1981 and 1982 she won two national championships each year in the 200 and 400 meters in the old Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Today, the CNU women’s track and field teams own a total of 61 individual national championships, to go along with their 12 team national titles. The program that young head coach Vince Brown took over in 1980 with two hurdles and a parking lot to run in now features two of the nation’s best competition venues in the Belk Track at POMOCO Stadium and indoors at The Freeman Center. In May 1987, in Naperville, Illinois, Claudia Stanley, Michelle Dickens, Lisa Dillard, Sheila Trice and Sandy Shelton piled up 80 points, with Dillard winning national crowns in the 100, 200 and long jump and anchoring the victorious 4x00 relay. This gave CNC its first team national title.
Dillard was the individual star of the year, also winning titles indoors at 55 meters and in the long jump, as the Captains finished second, a sign of things to come. But it was Trice who set almost unimaginable standards. She eventually accumulated 32 AllAmerica citations and won 15 event championships, both as an individual and with relay teams. It culminated in her being named the NCAA women’s Division III track and field Athlete of the Decade. Along the way, she had one of the greatest individual performances at an NCAA championship in history. In 1989, at Brunswick, Maine, she captured the 55 meters, 55-meter hurdles, long jump and triple jump — four national titles at one championship. It was a feat only the legendary Jesse Owens had previously accomplished. Incredibly, the 40 points she scored with those victories were more than any other team. “Team Trice” had won the national championship.
It came during a stretch in which Christopher Newport became the dominant power in Division III track and field, winning six consecutive national crowns, both indoors and outdoors, from 1987 to 1990. While the women’s track team was making most of the headlines, two other sports were fighting their way into national prominence. The men’s soccer team made its first NCAA appearance in 1986. Featuring two-time All-American Gerard Mosley, the Captains posted an 18-5 record. Although it would take 14 more years for CNU to reach NCAA play again, a consistently excellent program was a precursor to the top-notch squad of today that has made four NCAA appearances in the 2000s, including back-to-back Elite 8 berths in the last two years. Very quietly at first, the men’s and women’s basketball programs began runs that would cement their national reputations during the ’80s. On Feb. 22, 1986, the championship reputation of both began. That night, at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, North Carolina, both shocked the old Dixie Conference by winning their first conference titles. Led by tournament MVP Pam Stewart, the women began the festivities, first by knocking off regular season champions UNC Greensboro, 69-67, and then North Carolina Wesleyan, 66-62. CNC had come from fourth place during the regular season to win the conference title and accompanying NCAA bid.
A few hours later it was the CNC men doing the celebrating. They, too, defeated N.C. Wesleyan, by a 57-45 final score, to capture their own conference title. For the women it was the first of 13 NCAA appearances, and for the men, 17. It was merely C.J. Woollum’s second year at the helm. Again, who could have foretold what would eventually transpire. “When you take a job you never think about things like years, wins or championships,” he says. “But then, at the end, you look back and feel good.” Good, indeed. When his 26-year coaching reign came to an end last March, his Captain teams had accumulated 13 conference championship and 17 NCAA appearances, and he had reached one of the great coaching milestones, 500 victories. Woollum would be the first to say the outstanding players he and assistant coaches Roland Ross and Jon Waters had are the reason for the success. Start with Lamont Strothers. All he did was become the third leading scorer in Division III history, win All-American honors three times and secure one of the alltime Division III rarities, an NBA draft selection. Add to the list Steve Artis, James Boykins, Antoine Sinclair and a host of others, a total of nine of whom became All-Americans. Even more played professionally overseas. From a packed Ratcliffe Gym, possibly one of the great “homecourt advantage” locations, to the spacious Freeman Center, still one of the top Division III venues in the country, CNU basketball has
always had a built-in edge, one that extends to CNU’s women. Starting with the great Karen Barefoot, a three-time All-American, and extending through Misty Hart, Linda Richardson and Pam Stewart, the legacy was embodied perfectly by this year’s squad, which produced the greatest single season record in school history in any sport, 30-1. Led by junior Chelsea Schweers, CNU kept the wins piling up, taking its first 30 games in a row before finally falling in the Sweet 16. Schweers is on pace for an historic career. She closed the season just one point short of the rarely attained 2,000 mark — and still has a year to go.
Gridiron Giants Possibly the most momentous day in CNU athletics history occurred in 2000 when the announcement was made that “Christopher Newport will start a football program.” On May 9 of that year, longtime William and Mary assistant coach
Matt Kelchner was named the first football coach of the Captains. He’s been at the helm ever since. More than a year later, on Sept. 1, 2001, Kelchner led the charge as the first CNU football team, something many people never thought would exist, took the field in front of 6,135 excited fans to meet Salisbury. “I got here about 5 a.m.,” says Kelchner of that first game. “We had everything scripted. I had a script from like 7 a.m. until after the game. That day and the Ferrum game were surreal. It was like I was in a different world.” That Ferrum game — who could have predicted the final game of the first season, at the Oyster Bowl in Hampton, would be for a conference championship and NCAA bid? Kelchner admits he was worried. “Their defense was really good. They were ranked highly in the nation. I didn’t know if we could move the ball against them.” Add to that the fact that several key
at h l e t i c s
players were missing for a variety of reasons. But the Captains weren’t fazed. They took a 7-3 halftime lead on a 10-yard run by Kaveh Conaway and built the margin to 14-3 when Conaway scored on a 21-yard pass from Eric Carlson midway through the third quarter. Although Ferrum added a touchdown early in the fourth quarter, the Captains ended the game simply taking a knee for the last several plays, and had a 1411 victory. On a key drive in the second half, facing several fourth-down situations, Kelchner had turned to offensive coordinator Dan Antolik and said, “We’re going for it. What do we have to lose?” And losing has been rare, indeed. The Captains earned NCAA playoff bids in each of their first four seasons, something no other school, regardless of division, has ever done, and made a total of six appearances in nine years. Maybe the most famous play in CNU football history was “the catch.” Trailing Muhlenberg, 20-17, with a little more than three minutes remaining in CNU’s first home NCAA playoff game, Nathan Davis pulled in a 16-yard TD pass from Phillip Jones in a corner of the end zone to lift the Captains to a 24-20 victory.
New Millennium Successes While football has been the marquee sport of the 2000s, the overall excellence of the CNU athletics program has been unequalled.
A total of 10 Christopher Newport teams have made 53 NCAA appearances, culminating this year with three different teams, volleyball, men’s soccer and softball, reaching the Elite 8 and women’s basketball and field hockey reaching the Sweet 16.
Opposite page (clockwise from left): Lamont Strothers; Packed Ratcliffe Gym; Karen Barefoot Below: Press conference announcing Matt Kelchner (right) as CNU’s football coach; Tunde Ogen ’10 breaks through the line at the CNU vs N.C. Wesleyan game Oct. 17, 2009.
Much of that success has been under the direction of the “alum/coach.” Currently five CNU graduates are Captain head coaches. John Harvell (baseball), Keith Parr (softball), Jenny Nuttycombe (women’s tennis) and Rush Cole (men’s tennis) all are directing successful teams. But the ultimate alum/ coach may well be volleyball’s Lindsay Birch. A three-sport athlete at nearby Bruton High School, Birch (known then as Lindsay Sheppard) got into CNU volleyball almost as an afterthought. “I actually came to CNU primarily for basketball,” notes Birch. “But when I got here I met a girl in my first class that I had played volleyball with, and she said she was going to open tryouts that night.” Birch decided to try as well. It was a decision first-year coach Ken Shibuya won’t forget. Shibuya had been hired late in the summer and found himself with just three returning players. After enduring a 7-26 first year, CNU exploded to a 20-13 record in 1999 and has never won less than
20 matches since. As a senior, Birch helped guide the team to its first-ever conference title and NCAA bid. During the ensuing summer Shibuya left to become men’s coach at Juniata, a Division I volleyball program. Faced with the task of finding a new coach, Athletic Director C.J. Woollum didn’t bat an eye before offering the job to Birch. The result has been six NCAA appearances in eight years and another nationally recognized CNU athletics program. Nationally recognized — it is a term that has become synonymous with Christopher Newport athletics. d — WB
C hr i s tophe r N e w p ort Uni v e rsi t y ’s
oyages a l u m n i m a g a z i n e d 2 010
Mr. 500
Co ac h Woo llu m reaches h isto ric m ile ston e
Right: Bev Vaughan Below: Newly constructed Ratcliffe Gym Opposite page (clockwise from left): 1987 track team; 1987 NCAA national championship trophy; Sheila Trice, second from left, competing
C a p ta i n s Pride: A Look B ac k As CNU athletics gears up for a winning future, it already has much to celebrate.
The following was written by Wayne Block, recenty retired assistant to the athletic director/ communications. He spent 27 years at CNU and will be writing a book about the history of CNU athletics. Sometime next spring he and his wife will be moving to Arizona. Bev Vaughan was visiting the Christopher Newport College (CNC) campus to view the underconstruction Ratcliffe Gym. He was pondering an offer to become the fledgling school’s first basketball coach. As he entered the unfinished locker room, a man appeared, demanding, “What are you doing here?” It was a security guard, protecting the future home of the Captains. Today when Vaughan enters the beautiful Freeman Center, he does so as an honored guest. Little could the former William and Mary basketball star have dreamed of the heights Christopher Newport University would reach in collegiate athletics. What he began in 1967 has blossomed into a 22-sport empire that annually ranks among the top in NCAA Division III.
When Vaughan arrived there were a few athletes competing in track and field and a men’s basketball team — well, a club playing in the Newport News City League. “I never did see them play,” Vaughan notes. But from that beginning he crafted a 204-128 record over 14 seasons and fed directly into the outstanding program of today. From that initial club came the idea for the formation of future varsity sports. “If some students wanted to form a team we said, ‘let’s try it as a club team,’ and if there was still interest we would elevate it to the intercollegiate level,” explains Vaughan. The 1970s were a time of growth for the young athletics program. Men’s tennis and golf began during the 1970-71 school year, just as the college gained four-year status. Women’s basketball began as a
club, gaining varsity status during the 1971-72 season. Previously clubs had been formed for women’s field hockey and golf. Vaughan, still wearing many hats, actually coached men’s tennis for a short time. The first national notoriety hit campus when Carl Farris was named National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) honorable mention All-American in basketball. He became the first of more than 500 CNU studentathletes to attain that status. By decade’s end, men’s soccer and women’s volleyball had joined the Captains’ growing list of sports.
National Prominence The 1980s ushered in Christopher Newport’s first forays into national championship competition.
at h l e t i c s
Edna Davis could have no idea, as was the case with Vaughan, what she was beginning. But in 1981 and 1982 she won two national championships each year in the 200 and 400 meters in the old Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Today, the CNU women’s track and field teams own a total of 61 individual national championships, to go along with their 12 team national titles. The program that young head coach Vince Brown took over in 1980 with two hurdles and a parking lot to run in now features two of the nation’s best competition venues in the Belk Track at POMOCO Stadium and indoors at The Freeman Center. In May 1987, in Naperville, Illinois, Claudia Stanley, Michelle Dickens, Lisa Dillard, Sheila Trice and Sandy Shelton piled up 80 points, with Dillard winning national crowns in the 100, 200 and long jump and anchoring the victorious 4x00 relay. This gave CNC its first team national title.
Dillard was the individual star of the year, also winning titles indoors at 55 meters and in the long jump, as the Captains finished second, a sign of things to come. But it was Trice who set almost unimaginable standards. She eventually accumulated 32 AllAmerica citations and won 15 event championships, both as an individual and with relay teams. It culminated in her being named the NCAA women’s Division III track and field Athlete of the Decade. Along the way, she had one of the greatest individual performances at an NCAA championship in history. In 1989, at Brunswick, Maine, she captured the 55 meters, 55-meter hurdles, long jump and triple jump — four national titles at one championship. It was a feat only the legendary Jesse Owens had previously accomplished. Incredibly, the 40 points she scored with those victories were more than any other team. “Team Trice” had won the national championship.
It came during a stretch in which Christopher Newport became the dominant power in Division III track and field, winning six consecutive national crowns, both indoors and outdoors, from 1987 to 1990. While the women’s track team was making most of the headlines, two other sports were fighting their way into national prominence. The men’s soccer team made its first NCAA appearance in 1986. Featuring two-time All-American Gerard Mosley, the Captains posted an 18-5 record. Although it would take 14 more years for CNU to reach NCAA play again, a consistently excellent program was a precursor to the top-notch squad of today that has made four NCAA appearances in the 2000s, including back-to-back Elite 8 berths in the last two years. Very quietly at first, the men’s and women’s basketball programs began runs that would cement their national reputations during the ’80s. On Feb. 22, 1986, the championship reputation of both began. That night, at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, North Carolina, both shocked the old Dixie Conference by winning their first conference titles. Led by tournament MVP Pam Stewart, the women began the festivities, first by knocking off regular season champions UNC Greensboro, 69-67, and then North Carolina Wesleyan, 66-62. CNC had come from fourth place during the regular season to win the conference title and accompanying NCAA bid.
A few hours later it was the CNC men doing the celebrating. They, too, defeated N.C. Wesleyan, by a 57-45 final score, to capture their own conference title. For the women it was the first of 13 NCAA appearances, and for the men, 17. It was merely C.J. Woollum’s second year at the helm. Again, who could have foretold what would eventually transpire. “When you take a job you never think about things like years, wins or championships,” he says. “But then, at the end, you look back and feel good.” Good, indeed. When his 26-year coaching reign came to an end last March, his Captain teams had accumulated 13 conference championship and 17 NCAA appearances, and he had reached one of the great coaching milestones, 500 victories. Woollum would be the first to say the outstanding players he and assistant coaches Roland Ross and Jon Waters had are the reason for the success. Start with Lamont Strothers. All he did was become the third leading scorer in Division III history, win All-American honors three times and secure one of the alltime Division III rarities, an NBA draft selection. Add to the list Steve Artis, James Boykins, Antoine Sinclair and a host of others, a total of nine of whom became All-Americans. Even more played professionally overseas. From a packed Ratcliffe Gym, possibly one of the great “homecourt advantage” locations, to the spacious Freeman Center, still one of the top Division III venues in the country, CNU basketball has
always had a built-in edge, one that extends to CNU’s women. Starting with the great Karen Barefoot, a three-time All-American, and extending through Misty Hart, Linda Richardson and Pam Stewart, the legacy was embodied perfectly by this year’s squad, which produced the greatest single season record in school history in any sport, 30-1. Led by junior Chelsea Schweers, CNU kept the wins piling up, taking its first 30 games in a row before finally falling in the Sweet 16. Schweers is on pace for an historic career. She closed the season just one point short of the rarely attained 2,000 mark — and still has a year to go.
Gridiron Giants Possibly the most momentous day in CNU athletics history occurred in 2000 when the announcement was made that “Christopher Newport will start a football program.” On May 9 of that year, longtime William and Mary assistant coach
Matt Kelchner was named the first football coach of the Captains. He’s been at the helm ever since. More than a year later, on Sept. 1, 2001, Kelchner led the charge as the first CNU football team, something many people never thought would exist, took the field in front of 6,135 excited fans to meet Salisbury. “I got here about 5 a.m.,” says Kelchner of that first game. “We had everything scripted. I had a script from like 7 a.m. until after the game. That day and the Ferrum game were surreal. It was like I was in a different world.” That Ferrum game — who could have predicted the final game of the first season, at the Oyster Bowl in Hampton, would be for a conference championship and NCAA bid? Kelchner admits he was worried. “Their defense was really good. They were ranked highly in the nation. I didn’t know if we could move the ball against them.” Add to that the fact that several key
at h l e t i c s
players were missing for a variety of reasons. But the Captains weren’t fazed. They took a 7-3 halftime lead on a 10-yard run by Kaveh Conaway and built the margin to 14-3 when Conaway scored on a 21-yard pass from Eric Carlson midway through the third quarter. Although Ferrum added a touchdown early in the fourth quarter, the Captains ended the game simply taking a knee for the last several plays, and had a 1411 victory. On a key drive in the second half, facing several fourth-down situations, Kelchner had turned to offensive coordinator Dan Antolik and said, “We’re going for it. What do we have to lose?” And losing has been rare, indeed. The Captains earned NCAA playoff bids in each of their first four seasons, something no other school, regardless of division, has ever done, and made a total of six appearances in nine years. Maybe the most famous play in CNU football history was “the catch.” Trailing Muhlenberg, 20-17, with a little more than three minutes remaining in CNU’s first home NCAA playoff game, Nathan Davis pulled in a 16-yard TD pass from Phillip Jones in a corner of the end zone to lift the Captains to a 24-20 victory.
New Millennium Successes While football has been the marquee sport of the 2000s, the overall excellence of the CNU athletics program has been unequalled.
A total of 10 Christopher Newport teams have made 53 NCAA appearances, culminating this year with three different teams, volleyball, men’s soccer and softball, reaching the Elite 8 and women’s basketball and field hockey reaching the Sweet 16.
Opposite page (clockwise from left): Lamont Strothers; Packed Ratcliffe Gym; Karen Barefoot Below: Press conference announcing Matt Kelchner (right) as CNU’s football coach; Tunde Ogen ’10 breaks through the line at the CNU vs N.C. Wesleyan game Oct. 17, 2009.
Much of that success has been under the direction of the “alum/coach.” Currently five CNU graduates are Captain head coaches. John Harvell (baseball), Keith Parr (softball), Jenny Nuttycombe (women’s tennis) and Rush Cole (men’s tennis) all are directing successful teams. But the ultimate alum/ coach may well be volleyball’s Lindsay Birch. A three-sport athlete at nearby Bruton High School, Birch (known then as Lindsay Sheppard) got into CNU volleyball almost as an afterthought. “I actually came to CNU primarily for basketball,” notes Birch. “But when I got here I met a girl in my first class that I had played volleyball with, and she said she was going to open tryouts that night.” Birch decided to try as well. It was a decision first-year coach Ken Shibuya won’t forget. Shibuya had been hired late in the summer and found himself with just three returning players. After enduring a 7-26 first year, CNU exploded to a 20-13 record in 1999 and has never won less than
20 matches since. As a senior, Birch helped guide the team to its first-ever conference title and NCAA bid. During the ensuing summer Shibuya left to become men’s coach at Juniata, a Division I volleyball program. Faced with the task of finding a new coach, Athletic Director C.J. Woollum didn’t bat an eye before offering the job to Birch. The result has been six NCAA appearances in eight years and another nationally recognized CNU athletics program. Nationally recognized — it is a term that has become synonymous with Christopher Newport athletics. d — WB
