The 1997-98 season was one of the most productive, exciting, and rewarding years in the history of Mountaineer athletics. Will the 1998-99 season be even better?
There's not a Mountaineer anywhere who hasn't heard about the thrilling men's basketball season that saw the team go all the way to a nail-biting finish in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen.
Less well known but also very impressive is the fact that at one point during the spring semester, four Mountaineer teams—men's basketball, women's gymnastics, rifle, and wrestling—were ranked among the top 15 in the national polls, a first in more than 105 years of athletic competition at WVU.
Academic achievement by individual athletes last year enhanced the success the Mountaineers enjoyed in athletic competition. Eight football players were named to the Big East all-academic team, continuing a three-year string during which WVU has had the most players honored each year.
The rifle and women's swimming teams were honored for team GPAs by their respective coaching associations. For the last two semesters, the Athletic Director's Academic Honor Roll can boast the highest number of honorees in the history of the program.
The WVU athletics program is building for the future by constructing outstanding facilities to improve the offerings of several sports. Baseball and soccer already enjoy the advantages that new and improved facilities provide. Hawley Field now has a lighting system that ranks as the best in college baseball, and soccer enjoys a complex that ranks as one of the best in the Big East.
The Mountaineer track has been resurfaced and the Coliseum has newly renovated locker rooms to provide extra space for volleyball and women's basketball.
Football and gymnastics will benefit from new practice buildings completed this spring. And WVU's proud athletics tradition continues to grow with the addition of women's crew as our 21st varsity sport.
There have been great seasons like the undefeated football campaigns of 1988 and 1993, the NCAA Final Four run by the 1959 Gold and Blue squad, and the 13 national titles won by the WVU rifle team. But no season has seen teams across the board enjoy outstanding results like those experienced in 1997-98. It was a great run, and it's exciting to realize that WVU athletics have the potential for even higher achievements in 1998-99 and in years to come.
For ticket information, call 1-800-WVU-GAME. More information about Mountaineer sports, including schedules, is available on the World Wide Web at www.wvu.edu/~sports/
Two WVU athletes have joined an elite group. At the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field championships in June, both Charity Wachera and Kristen Quackenbush earned two-sport All-America honors, joining fellow track and fielder Bob Donker as the only Mountaineer athletes ever to do so. Donker, the first, did it in 1994.
Wachera, an All-American cross country runner, finished sixth in the 10,000-meter run this spring, earning All-America status as a distance runner. She was also the Big East conference's scholar-athlete of the year.
Quackenbush, whose six previous All-America awards in gymnastics made her a WVU sports phenomenon, finished fourth in the pole vault. With this, her seventh All-America honor, Quackenbush ties Patience Itanyi (1995-97) and James Jett (1990-92) for the most All-America awards won by an individual Mountaineer.
WVU Football Schedule 1998
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