Year in review: Panthers celebrate record-breaking seasons
By Sean Hamilton, Staff Writer//
Collegiate athletic programs can be judged on several fronts. Generally the two most important categories are results in the classroom and results in competition. Success in both is no simple task.
As a whole community, High Point should be more than ecstatic with the final results of the past year. This year’s annual report is highlighted by a record number of team conference championships (5) and the highest cumulative year-end GPA, with a total of 3.16 among all student-athletes. Ten HPU track and field/cross country student-athletes won individual Big South titles. A record 70 HPU student-athletes earned all-conference honors in 2014-15. And the records don’t stop there. 300 student-athletes were named Millis Scholar Athletes. Twenty-two of them posted perfect 4.0 GPAs.
Lets talk championships. Jeff LaCoste (senior) finished first at the Big South Cross Country Championship to earn Big South Runner of the Year honors. Both Men’s and Women’s Cross Country won Big South Titles. On another high note, both Reece Ayers 15’ MXC and Paul O’Donoghue 16’ MT&F were named Big South Scholar-Athlete of the Year for their respective sports. Three student-athletes for the NCAA preliminary in Jacksonville, Florida (Paddy Grandinali 16’ 10000m run, James House 18’ 100m dash, and Austin Miller 16’ pole vault).
Men’s basketball won its third consecutive regular season conference title, becoming only the sixth program in the country to accomplish such feat. The team won a record 23 Div. I games and achieved its first post-season victory. Returning Senior John Brown 16’ was named NABC All-District and a finalist for the Henson Award while being featured in Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, NBC Sports. He also made his tenth appearance on SportsCenter’s top 10 plays.
Women’s soccer won a thrilling Big South Championship game, tying the game in 87th minute on a goal scored by then Freshman Bri-Jean Charles. They went on to win the game after penalty kicks and reach the NCAA tournament where they would face Virginia and soccer phenom Morgan Brian, the number one overall pick in the 2015 NWSL Draft and contributing member of the 2015 World Cup winning US Women’s Soccer team.
HPU men’s lacrosse team won the Southern Conference Championship in stunning fashion as well. Sean Harrison (Class of 2017) scored the game-winning goal in the second overtime to claim a 9-8 victory over No. 20 nationally ranked Richmond. His goal secured the Panthers their first NCAA tournament birth, a colossal accomplishment for a program in only their third year of NCAA competition. Dan Lomas 16’ broke his own school record with 43 goals and was named Offensive Player of the SoCon conference for the second straight year. Lomas also received All-America honors. Seniors Pat Farrel 15’ and Austin Geisler 15’ became the program’s first two Major League Lacrosse professional selections.
Women’s lacrosse had five All-Big South Selections in Julia Burns, Allie Foard, Katie McLaughlin, Leah Pace and Erica Perrotta. Samantha Brown also earned an All-Tournament selection along with Julia Burns. Burns graduates with 285 Career saves, the most in program history. Allie Foard had arguably the greatest individual performance in any game by a Panther student-athlete all year when she posted a career high 12 points in a single game against Presbyterian on April 6. Her eight goals and four assists were the highest single game total by any women’s lacrosse player in the nation. The Panthers once again went undefeated at home against Big South competition. They have not lost a game at home versus Big South competition since the women’s lacrosse league’s inception in 2013.
This year the leading storyline for women’s basketball was the continued dominance of Stacia Robertson who became the second Panther to win Big South Player of the Year. She and Kaylah Keys 17’ both surpasses the one thousand point mark for their careers. They helped lead the Panthers to their second consecutive 20 win season and was a respectable runner-up in the Big South. Robertson became the first HPU women’s basketball player to garner AP All-American honorable mention accolades and continued her excellence in the South East Australian Basketball League and will play next in Poland for Basket Gdynia.
The fourth Panther who moved onto professional sports was men’s soccer standout Mamadee Nyepon. The senior scored 12 goals in his final collegiate season to end his career as HPU’s all time goal scorer. Nyepon scored 41 goals in his tenure at HPU and was again named to the All-Conference first team along with freshman teammate Ebe Kudolo. Additionally Austin Yearwood was named to the All-Conference second team and Renato Punyed earned an honorable mention. Men’s soccer named a new head coach in former assistant coach EJ O’Keefe. O’Keefe is a triad native (UNC Greensboro, Class of 2010) and the third head coach in the program’s division one era.
On the baseball diamond, the Panthers had two players earn All-Big South honors in 2015 as Josh Greene was named first-team All-Big South and Spencer Angelis was named second-team All-Big South. The Panthers pitching staff performed exceptionally in 2015, and had the second-lowest team earned run average (3.65) in HPU’s division one era. It should also be noted that former HPU baseball player Cody Allen continues to be one of the best relief pitchers in major league baseball. Allen is the closer for the Cleveland Indians and has saved 23 games this season.
If you like volleyball, then you just may be in luck this upcoming season. HPU’s volleyball team had a top-50 ranked recruiting class in 2015. The Panthers seem to be one of the more promising teams in the country, despite losing two of the top players in program history in Chelsea Davis and Kristin Heldt. In 2014 Chelsea Davis became the third player in Div.1 history to record one thousand kills and one thousand digs. Kristin Heldt also eclipsed one thousand kills in her career.
Jack Sides (Men’s Golf) became the first Panther in five years to win medalist honors with a win in the Cape Fear National Intercollegiate. Sides also earned two Big South post-season honors after being named to the All-Big South team as well as the league’s All-Academic team. HPU women’s golf had a great year finishing with an even team stroke average of 310.00. That mark is the second best single-season mark in the team’s history. he team shot a new program record at the 54-hole Oregon State Invitational to open the season. Tan Cheeranont (Women’s Golf) stood out with 20 of her 21 rounds counting toward the team score in 2014-2015.
On an additional high note, national exposure is at an all-time high. When you’re achieving success you want people to know about it. There were a record 826,000 visitors to HighPointPanthers.com and a record 178,000 views on the High Point Panthers YouTube channel. HPU’s men’s lacrosse team helped set a new record for views on a single Big South Network broadcast when over 12,400 tuned it to watch HPU take on Duke. HPU teams also made 25 national television appearances in 2014-2015, that too is a record for the school.
That is your crash course summary for all HPU sports in the 2014-2015 school year! It doesn’t require a sharp observer to recognize just how successful a year it was for the student-athletes. It’s only fitting that all of this comes into fruition during the inaugural year for the state-of-the-art Witcher Athletic Center. HPU has also unveiled a brand new Athletics Hall Of Fame that inducted its first eight members, including former HPU head basketball coach and athletic director Jerry Steele.