FORT WAYNE – There was not one, but two NAIA national championships within months of one another – the first in men’s basketball; the second was Jean Marqueling, a hammer thrower on the women’s track team.
Unquestionably and clearly unparalleled, the 2009-10 athletics season was like no other for Saint Francis.
“As I look back at this year, it was a year of both really, really great things, and a year in which I wish we would have done some things better,” athletic director Mark Pope said.
While the three most visible sports of men’s and women’s basketball and football produced winning seasons, it nevertheless was a dubious achievement since the 7-3 record in football was the worst since the 2-8 mark of 1998, the sport’s first season at the school.
“Seven and three is a record that people would envy; a lot of our sister institutions within the state would envy that,” Pope said, with a tweak toward South Bend. “For the standard that (head coach) Kevin (Donley) has set, and the expectations that people have, it was seen as a disappointment. And personally to Kevin, it was a disappointment.”
In the 10 years that followed the ’98 season, Saint Francis established itself as a national power, winning 112 of 127 games and reaching the NAIA championship game three successive years.
If there was an Indiana college team of the decade based on winning percentage alone, Saint Francis would have been it.
Yet in the afterglow of the 28-9 record and unexpected NAIA Division II title won by the men’s basketball team and the triumph by Marqueling, football at Saint Francis remains the engine that drives much of the donor support that pays for the bulk of the athletic program.
“There is pressure, and there is responsibility, and it’s huge,” Donley conceded. “Seven and three is not acceptable at our school. It’s not. And I’m the one who’s responsible for that.”
But 2010 was the exception.
Season-ending injuries to 14 first- or second-string players, including record-setting running back Daniel Carter, proved to be too much for even Donley to overcome.
With last season behind him, Donley only looks ahead.
“I think we’re going to be pretty good,” he says in that hushed, confident tone.
With all five starters returning, the defending NAIA champion men’s basketball team could also be pretty good. The major loss will be its coach, Jeff Rekeweg, who accepted a head coaching job at Northwood University, an NCAA Division II school in Midland, Mich.
Taking over will be his seven-year assistant coach, Chad LaCross.
“I told coach (Rekeweg), ‘Hey, you left me in a great position as far as the returning players and coming off a championship,’ ” LaCross said.
“The only thing is now the high expectations, and obviously we’re going to have them as a team.”
If only the future could be as bright for some of the other athletic teams at Saint Francis, in which men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, softball and women’s tennis all had losing seasons.
What does Pope expect?
“Success. Wins,” he said. “I think each of them have the ability to succeed given the funding that we have provided to them. Certainly both soccers have that ability. Baseball and softball, I think, we compete in our conference on an even keel, so I expect them to be more successful than they have in the past.
“Golf has done a very nice job of that. With limited scholarship funds and with limited funding for operations, they’ve won a lot of tournaments. They are kind of the model to show that it can be done.”
Yet Pope is also quick to praise the program’s academic success.
All athletic teams had a cumulative 3.05 grade-point average in the spring and 3.07 in the fall.
“My goal is 3.0 GPA each semester, and top 50 in the NACDA Director’s Cup standings for all 300 NAIA schools,” Pope said. “We finished 55th. We were close, but we didn’t hit the 50.”
The Cougars will add men’s tennis next season.
Then there is what Pope calls his “long-range goal – what we affectionately call ‘Shields Fields.’ ”
Thanks to an undisclosed six-figure donation from Fort Wayne businessman Jim Shields, Saint Francis was able to buy more than 26 acres of farmland that will allow the university to move most of its athletic programs directly across Lindenwood Avenue, west of the football stadium.
Pope said the university is still waiting to buy 13 additional acres before construction begins on the estimated $20 million complex, which would include a track and adjacent area for field events, soccer field, softball diamond, tennis courts, between 300 and 400 parking spaces and a multipurpose bubble that could be used for indoor football, baseball, soccer and softball practices.
The freestanding bubble, Pope said, would include a turf field. “It may be 50 yards, maybe a little less.”
“I’m 58 years old. I want to enjoy it,” he said of the complex that would be financed by donations. “I’d like to see this thing done within the next five years.”
