Pioneer Points
Director of Athletics Debby De Angelis
- July 28, 2010
It's amazing how quickly summer can slip away when you work in collegiate athletics. By the end of the month, our fall sports teams will have been practicing for a few weeks and will be set to kick off the season. Before we get ahead of ourselves, however, we still have a couple things to wrap up our successful 2009-10 season.
After finishing our first year in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, we had 26 student-athletes recognized for their work in the classroom, garnering CCAA All-Academic honors. To earn this distinction, student-athletes must be a varsity letterwinner in a CCAA-sponsored sport and maintain at least a 3.4 grade point average while completing a minimum of 36 units during the school year.
To have 26 student-athletes, representing each of our 12 CCAA-sponsored sports, earn this honor was quite an accomplishment. The group included CCAA Women's Basketball Freshman of the Year Lauren Lucchesi and 2010 CSUEB Male Athlete of the Year Stephen Gatehouse from baseball, along with freshmen Leta Pickett, Ashlee Coronado, Emily Montanez, Sara Holdridge, Emily Valenziano, Erik Rodriguez, Megan McDaniel, Shianna Falk, Rachel Alvarez and Dustin Stevens; sophomores Sukhjit Athwal, Tenaya Davis and Manny Cardenas; juniors Amanda Limeberger, Ariel Ajagu, Nikki Freiberg, Sarah Hasenfus, Marie Colon and Adam Green; and seniors Rachelle Boone, Andrew Welch and Nastassia Hamor.
Our six women's water polo players who earned Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches All-Academic honors last month were recognized for their efforts again in July, as the Western Water Polo Association named freshmen Claire Pierce, Chelsie Bryan and Alex Gudenau, juniors Danielle Comforti and Liz Warren and senior Jenna Casady to its All-Academic Team as well. Each member of the group earned at least a 3.0 grade point average and competed in a minimum of 50 percent of the team's games. The honors were the second straight for both Casady and Warren.
We congratulate all of our outstanding student-athletes for their dedication to success both on and off the field. Keep up the good work!
Wrapping up our summer coaching changes, new women's basketball head coach Suzy Barcomb announced the hiring of Holli Howard-Carpenter '02 as her Associate Head Coach. Holli joins our staff after four successful seasons as an assistant at Chico State. A former Pioneer, she earned Academic All-America honors and is among the program's leaders in career scoring average, free throw percentage and three point field goals. We are very excited to have Holli back in the Pioneer family and can't wait for her to put her CCAA experience to good use in our second year in the league.
All summer we've also been working hard to organize what I think will be the best edition of the in its 14-year history. Our biggest fundraiser, the tournament will feature 18 holes of golf on the four and a half star Hiddenbrooke Golf Club course in Vallejo, on-course competitions, awards, lunch, dinner and an auction. The tournament benefits the Richard and Susan Sherratt Athletic Scholarship Endowment, which provides financial assistance to our student-athletes who may otherwise not have the opportunity to attend Cal State East Bay and participate in intercollegiate athletics. We hope you'll join us for a fun day on the links as we gather to support Pioneer student-athletes on Sept. 13.
With our new staff on board, the golf tournament approaching and our student-athletes looking forward to returning to campus, we turn our attention to the start of our third and final season in the transition to Division II competition. After gaining plenty of experience in our first year in the CCAA, we're excited to open the 2010-11 season with our first CCAA soccer games at the newly renovated Pioneer Stadium and our conference volleyball opener at Pioneer Gym on Sept. 10.
Hope to see you there! Go Pioneers!