It’s been an incredible year for the University of Massachusetts Boston Athletics department. The 2015-2016 year has been full of broken records, Little East Conference championships, and furthering the success of the UMass Boston Athletic program as a whole. The Athletics department has worked tirelessly to build credit within the university, which resulted in the addition of Monan Park for the baseball team. Hopefully, the success will continue to evolve the sports facilities on campus.
In 2013, the Clark Athletic Center Gymnasium was remolded and improved into the enormously modern gym it is today. The success of the Women’s Volleyball team brought in a lot of fans and use out of the gym at the time; they were conference champions six times, regional champions three times, and qualified for the NCAA national tournament and appeared in the Elite Eight three times between 2009-2015. This 2015 season, the volleyball team kept the tradition going and were the LEC conference champions.
Women’s Basketball showed some major improvement in their program in their 2014-2015 season as they advanced to the conference championship finals for the first time ever and fell short just two points in overtime against Eastern Connecticut State University. The Lady Beacons continued their program’s success and returned to the conference championship in their 2015-2016 season as they faced Eastern Connecticut, but fell short of the title once again. The women’s team, making back-to-back appearances in the conference championship, is on the radar for the conference as being a serious team to watch in the upcoming years.
Men’s and Women’s Soccer have been giving outstanding performances as the men were the returning LEC champions this 2015 season and entered the Regional Tournament for the second time in a row, making these appearances the first two ever in program history. The women’s team were not at all unfamiliar with the conference tournament, but earned their Little East Conference Regular Season Championship title entering the conference tournament.
The most outstanding team this year would have to be Men’s Ice Hockey. Their advancement to the NCAA Frozen Four is the furthest any team sport at UMass Boston has gone in any NCAA post-season tournament. They ended the best season in program history at 23-5-3, falling short in double overtime against Norbert College 8-7. Women’s Ice Hockey broke program history as well: they won the conference championship for the first time ever. Both ice hockey teams’ success this year has put a new ice rink facility in the works for years to come.
The most outstanding athlete in the department this year belongs to the Track and Field program. Senior Hulerie McGuffie earned her first-ever indoor National Championship in the 400-meter dash and became an eight-time All-American with a time of 55.80 seconds. Sophomore Dom Nda also showed his talent as he broke the 7.06 program record in the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.01. Nda also broke the program record for the second time in the 100-meter dash. Cameron Chase, Jon Reed, Jeffrey Noyes, and Rokas Piragis make up the men’s 4×800 meter relay team, and they combined for a time of 8:41.90, which broke the original record of 9:02.84 set in 2014. Although Track and Field’s shining star, McGuffie, will be leaving the program, the young talent left behind proves to be good hands to pass the torch to.
The UMass Boston Baseball and Softball teams have had tremendous success this season as the softball team had the best record in their program history and qualified for the conference tournament for the fourth time since 2013. Freshman Annie Thomas set the program record for strikeouts at 126 against UMass Dartmouth in the opening round of the LEC tournament, but the team fell short and were defeated 6-5. The baseball team excelled Friday, May 6 as they earned their first ever regular season conference championship in their sweep over Rhode Island College 5-4 in the first game and 8-1 in the second. The LEC Tournament was hosted at Monan Park on May 11.
This year will go down in the books for these UMass Boston athletic teams, which will continue to develop not only the athletic facilities, but the supportive culture of the school. With a successful athletic program, the support from other students and faculty will help build the entire community of UMass Boston and take it one step closer to bringing the student body together.
Amazing Year for UMass Boston Athletics
Beacons volleyballer and Mass Media staff writer Pepper Baker has reported on athletics all throughout this academic year. In the latest print issue, she sums up our programs’ successes since last fall.
