2010 McMurry Football Desktop Wallpaper Schedule available; photo store now active!

Hello McMurry fans, I wish at this point there was a whole lot of information to share with you, but for another couple of weeks, the news reel isn't hopping. However, in the meantime, here are a couple of goodies in preparation for the football season. Click here to download your copy of the 2010 McMurry Football Desktop Wallpaper Schedule. Also, you can download the 2010 McMurry Football Preseason Prospectus by clicking here.

In addition, our so-called "Photo Store" on mcmurrysports.com is now actually a photo store. Well, at least with the latest gallery we just added. This compilation of 175 photos from the 2009-10 school year will be our guinea pig gallery to sell photos. The galleries uploaded previously will not be available to buy, however, all photo galleries uploaded for the 2010-11 school year will be available for purchase. So happy buying fans! Click here for more information.

Fall Report Days are as follows:
Football - Aug. 11
Volleyball - Aug. 15
Cross Country - Aug. 15
Men's Soccer - Aug. 15
Women's Soccer - Aug. 15

All McMurry Freshmen - Aug. 18

A tremendous award for the ever-fading dual-sport athlete

Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders were much more known for their accomplishments on the football field. However, most know that in addition to their successful NFL careers, each played in the major leagues. Jackson played with the Kansas City Royals and Sanders with the Atlanta Braves. Who can you name since then that has really made an impact in more than one sport? Certainly you could name a few who have excelled in one sport and put effort into another sport, but didn't quite live up. See Michael Jordan's minor league experience with the Birmingham Barons. Or check Terrell Owens' or Roy Jones, Jr.'s brief semi-professional basketball careers. Popular "X-Gamer" Shaun White excels with skateboards and snowboards at the professional level.

At the college level, we've seen it a little more often, but generally speaking, those who can perform at a high level in more than one sport are becoming more and more of a rarity. Division I and II athletes at the NCAA level are sometimes kept from doing two sports by the sport offering the scholarship, or we might see more. At the Division III level, it is more common since no student is bound by an athletic scholarship, however, it is seldom seen, much less done at a high level.

Jake Mullin became the first non-track athlete at McMurry to win the American Southwest Conference Male Athlete of the Year Friday. Read the official press release here. He received honorable mention for his play at quarterback for McMurry, but that award didn't do justice to his accomplishments on the gridiron. He hadn't taken a snap in three years prior to the season, the last coming in a run-heavy Wing-T offense at Burleson High. He proceeded in his first collegiate game in 2009 to break McMurry's single-game record for passing yardage with 479 setting up a season where he tossed 25 touchdowns and just nine interceptions in nine games to accompany 2,749 yards passing. He also helped a McMurry team with a winless 2008 an a two-win 2007 take four games in a row in 2009. With his rare combination of accuracy, arm strength and mobility, Mullin will likely turn a few more heads in the 2010 season.

On the baseball field, he earned national recognition as an all-American by D3baseball.com where he hit .462, hit 11 home runs, 19 doubles and 44 RBI's to go along with an on-base percentage that pushed .600. On a team that suffered some offensively challenged spurts throughout the season, Mullin was the main-stay. And, his quarterback arm in right field is rarely challenged.

Since he sat out of football and played two seasons of baseball, he lost one year as quarterback, so the upcoming 2010 season will mark his junior year on the field while the 2011 baseball season in the spring will mark his last on the diamond.

Enjoy the YouTube Video of McMurry football coach Hal Mumme and baseball coach John Byington reacting to the news of the award.

Stay tuned ...
--KR

New Facebook Page and Staff Shuffling at McMurry

Summer brings a lot of things for college athletic departments, and one thing that is almost always constant is that people come and go. This holds true at McMurry this summer, and if you haven't caught up on what's going on, here's a release on the new men's and women's basketball coaching assistants, and here's a release on a change within the baseball and sports information departments. We will also be announcing very soon a new women's soccer coach as well as some minor shuffling within the football staff, so keep checking back for that.

In addition, we added social networking as an emphasis at the beginning of last school year, adding this blog, the Twitter page and the YouTube channel. Well, now you can add our athletics Facebook page to the list. It's another avenue for us to get information out and it will help us also with the student body as we are able to send out invitations to events and games through Facebook. Check it out, and also take advantage of the discussion board to voice your opinions and thoughts.

No vuvuzelas for McMurry soccer; alum Rich gets a job in sports information; other notes and what's going on this summer

BREAKING NEWS: Good news from the soccer arena at McMurry. New men’s coach Paul Tate has assured me that absolutely no vuvuzelas (pictured) will be passed out to McMurry soccer fans for the upcoming season. The horns, which make the 2010 World Cup in South Africa sound like a giant behive hovers over the top of each stadium, will not be making appearances at Edwards Field.

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Often people ask me “What do you do in the summer?” “Do you have to work in the summer?” Much like many coaches will say that your in-season is made in the off-season, the summer time is crucial for me to get ahead for the fall, so that when it comes, I don’t get snowed under. Last year, I took this job in July for the second time after returning from a year of full-time graduate school at ACU. I didn’t have much of a summer, and dealt with the transition of picking up where my predecessor left off.

So, this summer, I’m especially excited to have a summer where I can “work.” Now, yes, the summer time hours are more lax than that 70-80 hour weeks that August and September bring, or the 60+ hour weeks when basketball concludes and baseball begins. However, Thomas Beckham and I are about to go into full swing in preparation for fall sports. First, I am completing a recruiting guide for the track and field program who had another successful season, and then we’ll turn our focus to the 2010-11 school year. Speaking of Thomas Beckham (McMurry alum and baseball-ex), we are lucky enough to keep him around for another year. He has been promoted to assistant sports information director and he will also serve as an assistant coach on the baseball team for the 2011 season.

Also, through Facebook, I learned that McMurry alum and former football player Coby Rich (pictured) has joined the business. The business of sports information that is. I’m extremely happy for Coby for a lot of reasons. Obviously, it’s great to see former McMurry players excelling in the business, but also, without a journalism department or a communications department at McMurry, it is very impressive that Coby was able to crack in to the field. He was recently named the graduate assistant at NCAA Division II Delta State University in Mississippi. He will serve as the primary media contact for a couple of sports there and will also be involved with video and broadcasting production. Congratulations to Coby.

Tidbits

• If you missed the article on Jeremie Hart and Jonathan Walker and their experiences playing basketball in Ecuador together, check it here. Walker was the ASC West Division Newcomer of the Year in 2008-09 and Hart earned the same award in 2009-2010. They didn’t play together on the floor at Kimbrell Arena, but they have joined the Naval club team in Guayaquil, Ecuador. They are preparing for an eight-team tournament that begins June 25 and both hope to catch on professionally in South America or in the European leagues.

• Former all-American Symbri Tuttle entered her Allen High School junior varsity team into McMurry head coach Veronica Snow’s team camp this week. I spoke briefly to Tuttle who is entering into her second year as the varsity assistant for the girls’ basketball team at Allen High School. She said that she will be taking over the JV team for the first time and she said she was “extremely fired up” about it.

Underclassmen have much to look forward to after eighth place finish

A No. 1-ranked team finishes eighth, and yes, there was some disappointment. Disappointment for both our coaches and out athletes. But, there are 400+ other NCAA Division III schools that have men's track programs that can't say they finished in the top eight, and McMurry did it, almost exclusively with non-seniors.

Cory Altenberg and Thomas Dimitri were the two seniors on the men's team that saw 10 all-America awards this weekend at the national meet including Dimitri. A young core of sprinters along with Terry Smith who will come back next year as a senior. Two pole vaulters have eligibility remaining on the men's side, and then of course, there's the recruiting season that always seems to bring in new talent that is ready to compete at the national level.

In retrospect, yes McMurry would have loved to bring home its second outdoor championship in three seasons, but McMurry and head coach Barbara Crousen will continue to build on their juggernaut for the 2011 season.

I enjoyed my time covering this year's national meet and enjoyed the successes of our athletes and coaches. I hope our McMurry fans, who've followed this blog and mcmurrysports.com have enjoyed the coverage as well.

This will officially wrap up the 2009-2010 school year and its athletics calendar. For you blog followers, I apologize for my inconsistency this year, but I hope you'll continue to come back to this page for tidbits and insight on McMurry's athletics programs. I blame some of my sporadic blogging on finishing my master's degree, and my goal next school year is to be more dedicated to what I believe to be a very valuable outlet.

I will update some in the summer on little bits and pieces when I can, but we'll heat it up again for football training camp beginning in August.

Stay tuned ...
--KR

Headed towards the final stretch

There is exactly one hour before McMurry's last event, the 4X400-meter dash. We've scored a few points today, and the goal for head coach Barbara Crousen is to finish in the top four teams, which ensures bring home an NCAA trophy.

Through the 400-meter finals, with the high jump, discus, 200-meter dash, the 5,0000-meter run and the 4X400-meter relay to go, McMurry is in seventh place with 17.5 points needing nine points to pass Springfield College for fourth. In addition, they'll have to pass Amherst (sixth) and Wisconsin-La Crosse (fifth). Both Springfield (26.0 points) and Amherst (18.0 points) are finished scoring, however, La Crosse has 23 points and has the 4X400-meter race to go.

McMurry's last event will also be the 4X400-meter race and will need to win the national title to take fourth place while La Crosse will have to finish in seventh or eighth place out of eight teams.

Stryker Pena (pictured) cleared the first bar at 6-6 in the high jump, but failed to advance on the 6-8 height. Although the final results are not in, it's unlikely the Pena finished in the top eight to score points.

McMurry scored points today with Kevin Cunningham finishing fourth in the 400-meter hurdles where Terry Smith finished eighth; both earned all-America status. The men's 4X100-meter relay team placed fourth with a time of 41.38 (0.35 seconds slower than their qualifying time). That team consisting of Kenneth Turner, Trevon Odom, Gavan Bass and Josh Zu-Bolton earned all-America status for their performance.

The 4X400-meter relay team consists of Kevin Cunningham, Terry Smith, Marcus Thompson and Kolby Barnhill. McMurry enters the finals with the sixth-best qualifying time, running in lane seven; the event begins at 4:55 p.m. EST.

We'll wrap it up later tonight
--KR

0 for 3 on day two - McMurry needs a big day tomorrow

So far, it hasn't turned out like McMurry University's No. 1-ranked men's track team wanted it to at the outdoor national track meet. On day two, Terry Smith missed qualifying in the 110-meter hurdles while Gavan Bass and Josh Zu-Bolton were kept out of the 100-meter dash finals by fractions of a second.

Yesterday, I was at the stadium for just over seven hours, while today, it only took an hour for all three athletes to be done today. This sets up a very big day three for McMurry if they want to compete for a trophy (top four finish). Kevin Cunningham and Terry Smith have guaranteed points in tomorrow's 400-meter hurdles as they are already guaranteed all-America status with just eight places remaining for the final run tomorrow. In addition, Stryker Pena will try and crack into the top eight in the high jump. And of course, McMurry will need a strong showing in both the 4X100-meter and 4X400-meter relays.

McMurry has 6.5 points after day two. Read the official release from today's events by clicking here.

For the rest of the track team, coach Holmes and I along with volunteer assistant track coaches Jason Reeves and Randy Willis went to down town Cleveland and explored for a while and made a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Another long day in store tomorrow, and McMurry is due for some success.

Stay tuned ...
--KR