A cooperative effort by SID Bob McComas and Assistant SID Jon Holtz:
• Three former Slippery Rock men’s soccer players will be coaching in the Division II National Tournament this season, including two as head coaches and one as an assistant coach.
Jeremy Spering, a 2002 SRU graduate and current Shippensburg University head men’s soccer coach, was named Tuesday as the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Coach of the Year. Spering, in his third season at Shippensburg, took a team that won only one game last season to a 14-5-1 record this year, a season that culminated with a PSAC championship and the program’s first ever berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Matt Thompson, a 1998 SRU graduate and former head men’s soccer coach at SRU, is now the head men’s soccer coach at Lees-McRae College in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Thompson is assisted at Lees McRae by
Patrick Cormac, who also played four seasons at SRU and served as the The Rock’s graduate assistant last spring. Thompson and Cormac, who led SRU to a PSAC title and the NCAA Round of 16 last season, led their new program to Conference Carolinas regular season and tournament titles this fall. The Bobcats were then accepted into the NCAA Tournament.
We’ll track the progress of these Rock alums in the DII Tournament and keep you posted on their progress in a future blog.
• Kudos are in order for The Rock women's soccer program, which earned its sixth trip to the NCAA Tournament when the field was announced Monday night. SRU is the No. 3 seed in the Atlantic Region and will face No. 6 West Virginia Wesleyan Friday at No. 2 seed California (Pa.).
• Rock Head Women's Basketball Coach
Tanya Longo recently announced that the Green and White will offer a Holiday Hoops Youth Clinic on Sunday, Dec. 12 in Morrow Field House.
Click here for more information.
• In case you missed it, Rock Director of Athletics
Paul Lueken announced there will be no admission charged for the Nov. 28 women's basketball home game vs. Findlay (1 p.m. tipoff) or the Dec. 29 men's basketball home game vs. Ohio University Eastern (3 p.m.), both of which will be played in Morrow Field House.
• Lueken also announced SRU's basketball "Take a Kid to the Game Day" event will be held Jan. 8 as part of the women's and men's doubleheader vs. Bloomsburg. The event will start with the 1 p.m. tipoff of the women's game.
• Longo announced SRU's "Pink Zone" event to promote breast cancer awareness will be held Saturday, Feb. 12, when The Rock plays Indiana (Pa.) at 1 p.m. in Morrow Field House.
• Recently heard from former Rock swimming and track and field student athlete
Tony Mehalic, who is in his fifth year as an elementary physical education instructor, high school track and field hurdles coach and junior-high cross country coach in the Greater Latrobe School District, his alma mater. He also coached boys and girls swimming from 2005-09 before stepping down to concentrate on a master's degree online at California U. of Pa. He said he's looking forward to coming back the third week of January for the annual Polar Bear Swim in Slippery Rock Creek and also returning to his summer job with the Ocean City (N.J.) Beach Patrol.
That's it for now.
GO ROCK!!
