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5/6/2009
The championship was the women’s third consecutive. They relied on their impressive depth to charge to victory, as exemplified by the 800-meter run: Michigan national champion Geena Gall won the race in record time, but the 10 points she earned for first place was half of what Minnesota earned with four placewinners. Four-time Big Ten champion, senior Heather Dorniden, turned in an outstanding individual performance, winning the mile run and, less than an hour later, cruising to a record win in the 600 meters. Five Big Ten titleists paced the Gopher men to their first conference crown since 1998. Junior Aaron Studt won the shot put, sophomore Hassan Mead claimed victory in the 3,000 and 5,000 meters, junior Matt Fisher won the high jump, and junior R.J. McGinnis captured the heptathlon title. McGinnis led an impressive surge in that event, as Minnesota also finished second (sophomore Joey Schweke), third (sophomore Brock Spandl), and eighth (sophomore Garrett Wankel). Overall, the Gophers scored in 15 of 17 events. Studt went on to claim second place in the national shot put finals, earning his first career All-America honor. Two weeks after guiding the team to its championship, the U.S. Track and Field/Cross Country Coaches Association named first-year men’s head coach Steve Plasencia the 2009 Midwest Coach of the Year. For the first time since 2000, the Gopher men’s hockey team failed to earn a berth in the 16-team NCAA hockey tournament. The Gophers were knocked out the of Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) playoffs with a 2-1 loss to Minnesota Duluth in the play-in game of the
The women’s hockey Gophers fell just short of their goal of reaching the NCAA championship game, falling 5-4 to Mercyhurst College at the Frozen Four tourney in Boston. The Gophers finished the season 32-5-3. Their appearance in the Frozen Four was their sixth and the first under head coach Brad Frost. Both the men’s and women’s basketball Gophers made it to the NCAA tourney. Each received a No. 10 seed and played a No. 7 seed in the first round. The women pulled off an upset, defeating Notre Dame at Notre Dame 79-71 before falling to Texas A&M 73-42 in the second round. The women ended the season at 20-12. The men fell to the Texas Longhorns 76-62, ending their season at 22-11. Junior Jayson Ness took third place at 133 pounds at the NCAA national wrestling championships. He has finished in the top five at nationals in each of his three seasons at Minnesota, placing runner-up last year and fifth as a freshman. He finished the year 38-8 overall. Freshman Zach Sanders and senior Tyler Safratowich placed sixth at 125 pounds and eighth at 157 pounds, respectively, and the Gopher team finished 14th overall. Gopher senior pitcher Briana Hassett leads NCAA Division I softball in strikeouts. Through mid-April, Hassett had a 50-run lead over the second place pitcher, Danielle Lawry of Washington. . . . The baseball Gophers put up the most runs against Ohio State since the beginning of the series in 1923, with a 16-3 shellacking of the Buckeyes in April. . . . Seventeen members of the women’s swimming and diving team earned academic all-conference honors, the second most in the Big Ten behind Northwestern’s 18. It was the second year in a row that the Gophers had 17 academic all-conference honorees. —Cynthia Scott | |||||||||||||||||
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