Here Come The Urban Knights

Take a look at the Seawolves' fall and winter schedules and you might see an opponent pop up that you haven't seen before. The volleyball, women's soccer, and women's basketball teams all have games scheduled against The Academy of Art University, an art school in San Francisco. Yes, it's the one you've seen in commercials.

The school decided to start an athletic department and they are jumping right into Division II. Along with athletic director Jamie Williams (the former 49er), AAU has been accepted into the Pacific West Conference. Nickname? The Urban Knights.

It might not be fair to expect a lot of success on the field this season, but with a bunch of fashion design majors walking around, I'd expect some nice uniforms.

For the record, the Urban Knights won't be the first art school to play against Sonoma State. A few years ago, the Savannah College of Art & Design, a very successful NAIA program, visited Seawolf Diamond for a baseball series.

Back To The Future?

By Bill Fusco, SSU Director of Athletics

Back in the 90's, Sonoma State University was a member of the Northern California Athletic Conference (NCAC), the only NCAA Division II conference in the country that did not offer athletic scholarships. Besides SSU, the NCAC membership consisted of San Francisco State, Chico State, Cal State Stanislaus, Humboldt State, UC Davis, Cal State Hayward and the College of Notre Dame.

For SSU, it was a great conference to be in because there were some intense rivalries and no air travel was required to complete a conference schedule. That was all well and good until UC Davis decided it was time to move to a scholarship conference. In 1997, UC Davis announced that the Aggies were moving to the Southern California based California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) and would start awarding athletic scholarships for the first time in the history of their program. As soon as UC Davis announced their intentions, four other NCAC members (SSU, Chico, SF State and Stanislaus) climbed aboard the Aggie Express to the CCAA. College of Notre Dame and Cal State Hayward decided to move into the NAIA and Humboldt State moved north joining the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC).

12 years later, alot has changed, yet things look surprisingly similar. UC Davis has moved on to NCAA Division I and the Big West Conference. Humboldt State finally joined the CCAA two years ago. Last month we learned that Cal State Hayward (now known as Cal State East Bay) plans to move back into NCAA Division II and become a member of the CCAA starting with the 2009-10 academic year. With CSU East Bay joining the CCAA, six of the original eight NCAC members are now competing in the CCAA. With CSU Monterey Bay, there are seven CCAA schools in the north and five CCAA schools in the south.

In the not to distant future, you can count on Cal State San Marcos and CSU Channel Islands (both southern schools) declaring their intentions to join NCAA Division II and the CCAA. At that point, the CCAA will finally have some balance with seven schools each in the north and south. That won't nessarily make scheduling any easier than it is now, but having 14 schools in the CCAA will provide a great deal of stability and financial security.

By the way, College of Notre Dame changed their name too. Notre Dame de Namur University is just completing their requirements to return to NCAA Division II and have been a member of the Pacific West Conference for the past two years. The NCAC lives on.

The Calm Before The Storm

It's that time of year again. It's pretty quiet at Sonoma State right now, but within a couple of weeks, the campus will be filled with dozens of student-athletes making preparations for their fall seasons. Our first pre-season game is less than a month away and the regular season gets started in just over a month. The summer seems to get shorter every year.

People often wonder what we in athletics do during the summer. I'm sure they figure that a Sports Information Director just lounges by the pool all day... a three-month vacation. Unfortunately, that is far from the case. Though my hours are cut back (I get to work a 9-5 day!), I'm still at the office Monday through Friday, doing all the little things that we don't have time for during the year from publication production to research.

Fall and winter sports schedules are posted on the website. We've got another busy season coming up with quite a few non-conference soccer games at home, and of course, our volleyball tournament, the Seawolf Spike.

Side note: Our volleyball coach told me last year that "spike" is not a cool term any more. Apparently no volleyball player uses the word "spike". As you can tell by some of our other events, "Seawolf Splash", "Seawolf Sip", etc., alliteration is key with the Sonoma State Seawolves. Sorry volleyballers.

Seawolves In The Pros

In case you haven't seen it before, the athletics website has a list of former Sonoma State baseball players that are now playing professionally. It's a very impressive list and it seems to grow every year. I guess that's what happens when you win back-to-back league titles and go 102-27 over a two-year stretch.

Former Seawolves are scattered throughout just about every level of pro baseball, from the independent leagues all the way up to Triple-A.

There is one former SSU pitcher who is having a tremendous year, Bryan Oland (right). A two-year member of the Seawolves (2006-07), Oland is pitching for the Fort Wayne Wizards in the Padres' organization. He was drafted by San Diego last year and spent the remainder of his summer pitching in the Arizona League. Bumped up to the Low-A level Wizards of the Midwest League, Oland has been just phenomenal in relief. As of Saturday he is 3-1 with a 1.11 ERA in 25 games (24 of them out of relief). He's struck out 42 batters in just 32.1 innings of work. Not bad.

There are many other guys who are having nice seasons (for instance, Tom Everidge has 17 homers and 76 RBIs in Double-A right now). Be sure to check on their progress on the "Seawolves in the Pros" section of the website.

Welcome to the blog!

We've made it. The athletic department is now firmly planted in this decade with the start of "Seawolves" the blog. We thought this would be a great way to communicate with our fans and student-athletes in a more casual environment.

Over the last year or so, the Sports Information staff (that's me) has been able to talk student-athletes into writing blogs for the main athletics website (www.sonomaseawolves.com). The support for these blogs has been overwhelming, so we thought we'd make this a more regular feature. We hope to get a student-athlete from each sport to contribute to this blog, giving insights on their season, upcoming games, and student-athlete life in general. You'll also get 'behind the scenes' reports from myself and several other coaches and administrators on the SSU athletics staff. We hope you enjoy. Remember, for scores, schedules, game stories, etc., you'll still go to sonomaseawolves.com. This is where you want to come for all the inside Seawolf dirt. Enjoy!