DII Gold Award Nominees

SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. – Slippery Rock University is proud to announce distinguished alumni C. Vivian Stringer and George Mihalik as The Rock's nominees for the NCAA Division II Gold Award that will be presented this year in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Division II.
 
This award, which is part of the division's yearlong 50th anniversary celebration that launched Aug. 7 and will extend through the 2024 Division II Baseball Championship in June, will recognize two individuals, one male and one female, who have made a positive impact in Division II.
 
Each institution in Division II and each conference in Division II could nominate one male and one female to advance to a conference voting stage. Each conference will select one male and one female to forward to a national committee vote.
 
A total of 231 individuals from across the country were nominated.
 
"The nominees reflect the considerable impact so many individuals have had on intercollegiate athletics over the years, but also the pride the Division II membership demonstrates consistently in providing the experiences that enable young people to make a positive difference in the world," said Terri Steeb Gronau, vice president of Division II.
 
Slippery Rock narrowed a strong candidate pool down to a pair of exceptional alumni that dedicated their lives to collegiate athletics and selected 1970 alumna C. Vivian Stringer and 1974 alumnus Dr. George Mihalik.
 
"We have a long list of tremendous individuals who have made a lasting impact at Slippery Rock University," said Roberta Page, director of athletics. "We narrowed the list down to two individuals whose career accomplishments speak for themselves. What Vivian accomplished in the sport of women's basketball is remarkable and the impact that George has had at Slippery Rock, not just as a coach, but also as an educator, is nothing short of incredible."
 
Stringer graduated in 1970 and went on to a decorated coaching career in the sport of women's basketball, where she would amass 1,055 career wins on her way to being enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
 
Mihalik graduated in 1974 after quarterbacking Slippery Rock to back-to-back conference titles and went on to dedicate more than 50 years of his life to the University. He retired in January of 2016 after serving as head football coach for 28 seasons and winning a school record 197 games. What was remarkable about Mihalik was that he also remained a full-time professor at SRU during his entire coaching career, writing the curriculum for SRU's highly successful safety management program and teaching all the way through the fall semester in 2015.
 
A brief look at the impressive accomplishments of Stringer and Mihalik can be found below. The PSAC will selects its two nominees to advance to the national ballot by Nov. 6. The eventual winners of the Gold Award will be recognized in January at the NCAA Convention.  
 

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C. Vivian Stringer – Slippery Rock Class of 1970
 
Slippery Rock University Alumna C. Vivian Stringer spent 50 years as a collegiate head women's basketball coach. Stringer amassed 1,055 wins, four Final Four appearances and 28 berths in the NCAA Tournament. She was inducted to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001.
 
Stringer served as head coach at Rutgers from 1995 to 2022, the longest tenured Rutgers coach at the time of her retirement. During that span, she won 535 games with the Scarlet Knights while qualifying for 17 NCAA Tournaments, including 10 consecutively from 2003 to 2012. Stringer led Rutgers to a pair of Final Four appearances in 2000 and 2007, with the latter culminating in RU's first NCAA Championship Game. In 2000, she became the first men's or women's basketball coach to guide three different intercollegiate programs to the Final Four after playing in the first NCAA Championship Game with former PSAC member Cheyney State in 1992 and leading Iowa to the national semifinals in 1993.
 
Stringer's historic impact was evident at every stop of her career. She turned limited resources and pre-Title IX challenges at a small, historically Black school at Cheyney State into a run at the national title. She turned a seven-win Iowa program that ranked 299th out of 302 teams in attendance figures into a perennial contender that posted its first-ever advance sellout of Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Within three seasons at Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights won 20 games and won a Big East division title. Within five years, RU rose to national prominence as the women's game exploded in popularity across the United States.
 
Stringer surpassed the monumental 1,000-career victory milestone in November 2018. She became the fifth NCAA Division I women's basketball coach to reach 1,000 career wins and was the first African American coach to reach the milestone. She retired ranked fifth all-time in NCAA women's basketball history with 1,055 career victories. In 2019-20, Stringer passed the late, great Pat Summitt and became the NCAA record holder with 37 seasons of 20 or more victories. Following that season, she received the John R. Wooden Award "Legends of Coaching" honor based on character, success on the court, graduation rate of student-athletes in their basketball program, coaching philosophy, and identification with the goals of the John R. Wooden Award.
 
In March 2021, Stringer was honored in the Sports Business Journal as a Leader in Diversity and Inclusive Hiring. Stringer also recruited, developed, and coached 21 student-athletes who would be selected in the WNBA Draft, along with others who played professionally overseas.
 
She was an assistant coach for the gold-medal 2004 U.S. Olympic Team. Stringer was one of the key players in the development of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association. She served on the Board of Directors of the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund. The Foundation, in partnership with the V Foundation for Cancer Research, is an initiative to fight breast cancer.
 
The basketball court at Rutgers was renamed in her honor when she retired in 2022.
 

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Dr. George Mihalik – Slippery Rock Class of 1974
 
Dr. George Mihalik is the ultimate representative of the power of Division II and what our institutions can mean to a person. He retired from Slippery Rock University after the 2015 football season after devoting 44 years of his to SRU.
 
He arrived at The Rock in 1970 and was a starting quarterback on a football team that won three straight conference titles when he was a student. He then came back to SRU and spent the entirety of his professional career working as a full-time professor and coach.
 
He continued teaching classes all the way until his retirement in January of 2016, long after it had become the norm for coaches to also be professors.
 
Since retirement, Mihalik has stayed involved with SRU working part-time in the advancement office, helping the safety management academic program and the University overall to raise funds from donors across the country, continuing his commitment to Slippery Rock well beyond the 50 total years of Division II's existence. Earlier this season, he also stepped into the broadcast booth to call two games for the nationally ranked Rock football program, again continuing his commitment to the University.
 
Mihalik won 197 games in 28 seasons as head coach at SRU (197-111-4 for .638 career winning percentage), won eight PSAC West titles and reached the NCAA Division II Playoffs six times. He was a six-time Coach of the Year honoree.
 
Perhaps more important than his contributions to SRU football, Miihalik also wrote the curriculum and launched the safety management program at SRU, which has become the largest brick and mortar safety management academic program in the country and one of the most successful programs at SRU.
 
The 15th head coach in Rock football history, Mihalik inherited a program that had experienced back-to-back losing seasons. A 5-3-2 record in his first season as head coach was a sign of things to come. Two seasons later, The Rock began a run of 12 successive winning seasons. Mihalik-coached Slippery Rock teams to a total of 22 winning seasons and one .500 campaign in his 28-year head coaching career. He led the program to winning seasons in each of the last seven years of his career, which ended with three straight trips to the national playoffs and back-to-back PSAC Championship titles in 2014 and 2015.
 
All told, Mihalik played three seasons as SRU's starting quarterback and coached for a combined total of 40 seasons. As a Rock player, he was a three-year letterwinner and quarterback of the 1972 and 1973 PSAC championship teams.
 
While developing winning football teams, Mihalik avoided the "win-at-all-costs" approach and instead focused on producing valuable members of society. The Rock football team owned the highest academic success rate of all teams in the PSAC during his final season of coaching and routinely ranked near the top of the PSAC in football team GPA.
 
The football stadium at Slippery Rock was renamed in his honor in 2011.
 
 
 
 
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