Two-thousand fifteen was another big year for Aggie Athletics. It was a year where N.C. A&T earned national recognition for backflips, bowl games and bowling. Track and field made second place both interesting and agonizing. Aggie Athletics also made strides financially and academically. The following is the top-10 stories of 2015 with three honorable mentions. Happy New Year!
Honorable Mention (Interim Tags Removed) –North Carolina A&T got two new head coaches in 2015. Ben Hall became the 11th head coach baseball coach at N.C. A&T since 1950 when he earned the permanent full-time position in July. Hall was the interim coach during the 2015 season where the Aggies went 10-36 overall and 7-17 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. The Aggies came on strong late in the season, Hall coached the MEAC Rookie of the Year in Adan Ordonez and he impressed director of athletics Earl Hilton with the way he led the program on an interim basis. Richard Akande joined Hall in having his interim tag removed as he will be the coach to lead men's and women's tennis into a new age. Akande re-introduced men's tennis to N.C. A&T in 2015, and during the fall of 2015 the women's program showed promise by having individuals win some matches during tournaments. Hopefully in 2016 both coaches can continue to grow men's and women's tennis and baseball.
Honorable Mention (Seeing 20/20/20) – Cal Irvin never did it. Patricia Cage-Bibbs never did it. Even with all of his championships, Don Corbett never did it either. Current women's basketball coach Tarrell Robinson became the first N.C. A&T basketball coach – men or women – to win 20 games in each of his first three seasons. Robinson edged former men's basketball coach Gene Littles, who had back-to-back 20-win seasons his first two seasons (1977-78, 1978-79) as head coach, by having the women's basketball team achieve a 20-11 record during the 2014-15 season. Robinson has finished no lower than third in the MEAC since taking over the program in 2012. He came into the 2015-16 season with 66 wins over a three-year period.
Honorable Mention (Volleyball milestones) -- Ashley Johnson and Brooke Stamnes put their names in the record books their senior seasons as volleyball players. Johnson became the school's all-time leader in digs during a match at Davidson in October. Johnson, the Aggies starter at libero for four straight seasons, ended her career with 1,575 digs. Her teammate for the past four years, Stamnes, became just the second player in school history to record 1,000 kills for a career. She ended her career second all time in school history in kills.
10. Gardin Breaks NCAA Record – And he did it with so much showmanship. Khris Gardin came into the Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl needing only two yards to break the NCAA FCS record for punt return yards in a season. On Alcorn State's first punt of the game, Gardin caught the ball at the Aggies 26-yard line, made one man miss, accelerated at the 30-yard line and made one additional cut 15 yards later to break into the clear for the record and a 74-yard touchdown for the first-ever score in the Celebration Bowl. The return gave Gardin 740 punt return yards for the season, establishing the new record. He also averaged 61.67 yards per game in punt return yardage, another NCAA record. For his efforts, Gardin was named first-team All-American by STATS, the FCS Athletics Directors Association and Boxtorow in addition to being named first-team All-MEAC. The Aggies have become Punt Returner U. Former Aggie punt returner Curtis Deloatch owns the NCAA record for yards per punt return in a season (26.7).
9. Golf Gets Up And Down – The women's golf program made many strides in 2015 starting with naming a head coach. Richard Watkins will lead the women's golf program in 2016 before making news in 2017 by starting the men's program. After being named head coach in July, Watkins went out and found the Aggies' home course. Bryan Park, a Brown Summit facility, will be the Aggies home course. They will have unlimited access to the driving range Monday-Saturday and unfettered access to the course Monday-Thursday. Watkins wasn't done. Later in the year, he signed the first two players in the history of women's golf at N.C. A&T. Jocelyn Andrews and Deja Smith will be answers to a trivia question one day as the two ladies have set the stage for Watkins' programs.
8. Money, money, money – Okay, technically this might be 2014 news but it wasn't made completely public until 2015, so we're going to go with it. Fundraising is always an important aspect of athletics as coaches try to improve their respective teams through facility improvements and recruiting. The Aggie Athletic Foundation plays a big role in those aspects. The AAF, the official fundraising arm of Aggie Athletics, raised more than $500,000 during the calendar year 2014. Those totals were a record for the AAF which was established in 2011. In addition, $300,000 was contributed to Aggie Athletics, the AAF has exceeded their donor revenue goal for two consecutive years and they engaged and stewarded more than 600 AAF donors.
7. Classroom Success – It was a good year for the Aggies in the classroom. In 2015, the Aggies had five teams – women's tennis, women's basketball, bowling, and swimming – earn a perfect Academic Progress Rate score of 1000. The APR score measures how well NCAA institutions are retaining and graduating student-athletes. In addition, the football program has the second highest rise in APR score in the nation over the last five years. The Aggies football program has gone from a 2008-09 single year score of 828 to a 2013-14 single year score of 958.
6. So Close – Second place isn't necessarily the big story, but it is the way second place happened. The men's track and field program finished second at the MEAC Track and Field Indoor Championships in February before finishing second in the MEAC Track and Field Outdoor Championships in May. It was simply a matter of if we had an athlete in this event or if this athlete would have finished where he usually finishes, then the Aggies would have two MEAC titles. The men went into the final indoor event trailing Bethune-Cookman by 2.5 points. The Wildcats won the first of two sections with a time of 3:19.07. The Aggies needed to run a faster time than the Wildcats with the hopes of knocking the Wildcats out of the top eight to win the title. The team of Keenan Smith, Todd Townsend, Dorian Claggett and freshman Dajuan Harding finished in 3:19.06 to earn three points with a sixth-place finish. B-CU finished seventh, adding two points to win the title by a mere 1.5 points, 125.5-124. Three months after losing the MEAC indoor by 1.5 points, again the Wildcats outlasted the Aggies for the outdoor championship by one point, 139-138. The final event of the evening was the men's 4x400 meter relay. The Aggies needed to finish third for the championship but instead came up short by finishing fourth. The men's cross country team finished 2015 by finishing second at the MEAC championships. The next step in 2016 is first place.
5. N.C. A&T Receives A Grant -- We start our top-5 with needed funding for Aggie Athletics. The Department of Intercollegiate Athletics at North Carolina A&T State University was awarded a multiyear, comprehensive grant through the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Accelerating Academic Success Program in the amount of $277,284 to be distributed in three annual installments beginning in 2015. The funding will go toward enhancing academics within Aggie Athletics, provide needed staff for the Center of Academic Excellence while assisting in helping N.C. A&T graduate more student-athletes.
4. “Of the Year” – N.C. A&T had another year of winning player of the year honors from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. In fact bowler Emily Strombeck and football player Tarik Cohen are looking to have their respective awards named after them. Strombeck won her second straight MEAC Bowler of Year award by averaging 202.0 per game, leading the Aggies to their second-straight 70-win season and the MEAC southern division title. In addition, her head coach James Williams won his second straight MEAC Coach of the Year honor. As for Cohen, he was named MEAC Offensive Player of the Year for the second consecutive year after helping the Aggies win their second straight MEAC title and a bid to the inaugural Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl. His teammate Khris Gardin earned All-American honors from three different organizations as a punt returner, while baseball catcher Adan Ordonez was named MEAC Rookie of the Year after batting .337 in his first year of college baseball.
3. Tarik Cohen – Cohen entered Aggie legendary status along with such names as Elvin Bethea, Cornell Gordon, George Ragsdale, Alan Hooker, Dwaine Board and Maurice Hicks. No, Mr. Cohen is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he has never played in and won a Super Bowl title or started at running back for the San Francisco 49ers. But none of the aforementioned players other than Cohen has ever stepped onto the national stage of playing on a major American network like ABC and ran for 295 yards and three touchdowns, the fifth-best postseason rushing performance in NCAA FCS history. None of those guys became a social media sensation thereby earning a trip to Bristol, Conn., to appear live on ESPN's SportsCenter. Cohen's 2015 also included him becoming the Aggies all-time leading rusher and breaking the single-season rushing record. With one year of eligibility remaining, his 2016 could include him breaking the conference rushing record. His ability to keep N.C. A&T in the national spotlight qualifies him for legendary status.
2. A N.C. A&T First – Cohen's accomplishments were of the individual variety, but you have to go with the team accomplishment for No. 2. The North Carolina A&T bowling team became the first program in the history of Aggie Athletics to win a national championship. The bowling team won the 2015 United States Bowling Congress (USBC) Intercollegiate Team Champions (ITC) with a 3-1 win over Robert Morris at Northrock Lanes in Wichita, Kansas. The ITC, first contested in 1975, is the pinnacle event of the college bowling season. The ITC brings together the top 16 men's and top 16 women's teams in the country to compete for national titles. They are mostly the top teams who came up short in their conference championships. USBC is the national governing body of bowling as recognized by the United States Olympic Committee. Sophomore MacKenzie Robinson who threw a strike in the last game for the win. A&T's road to the ITC title started when it won the ITC Sectionals in March. At the championship, A&T was seeded sixth after 24 qualifying games and defeated McKendree 4-2 and St. Francis twice by scores of 4-0 in bracket play to appear in the championship against Robert Morris.
1. Celebrate Good Times, Come On – There might have been some reservation when it was first announced the MEAC would surrender its automatic bid for its conference champion to play in the NCAA FCS playoffs to instead have its champion play in a bowl game in Atlanta. Ask any Aggie today and there seems to be no regrets. The Aggies won a share of the MEAC title and prevailed in the tiebreaker process to earn a spot in the inaugural Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl. In the process, the Aggies spent a few days in Atlanta at the Georgia Aquarium, the College Football Hall of Fame and the Civil Rights Museum. The Aggies were also a part of an instance pregame show conducted by ESPN's Saturday morning SportsCenter. When it was time to get down to business, the Aggies defeated Alcorn State 41-34 at the Georgia Dome to win the HBCU National Championship. More than 35,000 fans came to the Georgia Dome, the game was seen live on ABC by thousands of other HBCU graduates and observers and the Celebration Bowl was the second-highest event trending on ESPN's twitter on Dec. 19. The bowl also made the name Tarik Cohen more recognizable to America after his 295-yard rushing day, and it provided a big payday for N.C. A&T Athletics.
