14 The Beacon Sports September 17, 2009

Mike Pacholec said. “I couldn’t imagine the Pilots playing any-one in there now.”

In 1935, Columbia University

of Portland and student athletes proudly displayed their purple and white uniforms. Football re-mained the most popular sport on campus, but there was also strong intramural competition in other sports like bowling and golf.

Christie Hall had a bowling alley for students to compete the grounds of Shipstad used to be a

The 1930’s were a time of de-velopment for Pilot athletics. The football team nearly reached the status of a big-time football pow-er before World War II brought athletics to a screeching halt.

-ing into a respectable program before the war.

World War II marked a turn-ing point in Pilot athletics; no sporting events were held be-tween 1943 and 1945. Following the war, attempts were made to revive the football program but the University eventually had to

-nancial reasons.

-

program of the University have

-istration feels that available re-

sources could be used to better advantage in developing all de-partments of the University.” The Rev. Theodore J. Mehling, C.S.C. said.

Distraught by the elimination of football, some players buried a football on campus, which has not been found to this day.

“A lot of people think it would be cool if UP had a football team,” Pacholec said. “But at the same time I think not having one gives people a chance to really appreciate other sports.”

In the void left by football, basketball rose up as the new favorite sport on campus. The 1950-51 season saw the Pilots achieve a 23-6 record, the largest winning season ever achieved in Pilot basketball.

track built on 1952, the UP track program once again became a powerful contender in the North-west and cross country rose along with it.

Student enthusiasm for inter-collegiate sports declined very rapidly during the 1960’s while participation in intramural sports rose sharply. Several times dur-ing the late 60s, some games

hockey even achieved a higher student attendance than intercol-legiate contests.

Interest in soccer began to grow during the 1960’s with the

The track program once again gained recognition with the com-

-

country.During the 70s, the basketball

team once again saw success and increased support. Several Civil War games against Portland State University garnered interest in what was essentially a city cham-pionship, and the basketball team

Coast Athletic Conference in the 1976-77 season.

The mid-seventies also saw increased demand for a soccer program largely due to the per-formance of the Portland Tim-bers in the North American Soc-cer League. Thus, a men’s club team was formed.

The 1970’s marked the begin-ning of women’s sports at UP with the addition of women’s basketball, volleyball, softball and soccer. Though both men’s and women’s soccer struggled in the early eighties, winning sea-sons came in the latter half of the decade with the arrival of Head Coach Clive Charles.

After bringing the men’s soc-

in 1988, Charles also took over the head coaching duties of the women’s team and UP began to

force on the pitch. Now the University of Port-

land is well-known as a soc-cer titan, and gone are the days where the football team owned the pitch.

UP athletics continues to evolve, and its future has yet to be written.

Continued from page 16

Courtesy of University ArchivesEdwin Fredell poses with a football in 1903. The University stopped funding the football program after the end of World War II.

HISTORY: Football funding sacked

The Beacon 15September 17, 2009 Sports

This week in sports

the right side of the net.

off earlier, but it was a good re-sult,” said Enyeart.

season invitational is a good in-dication of the season that is yet to come.

“We have a lot of games to go, but I think we’re off on a good foot,” she said

Their stellar record speaks for itself and may prompt fans to compare this year’s group of play-ers with that of the 2005 national championship team, but Smith believes comparisons to teams of past should be avoided.

“Every team is different,” he said. None of this year’s players were on the championship team, and “it’s a completely different year.”

this weekend to face off against -

ern Methodist on Sunday. The team is “just looking to

go one game at a time,” said En-yeart.

The strategy is simple. When asked about the team’s perfor-mance at the Invitational games, Smith said the team accom-

to do. Win them.”“We obviously don’t want to

were “off to a nice start.”

runners this year,” Conner said. Dunbar placed second at the

high school level Footlocker Na-tionals and Osoro placed third at the high school level Nike Nationals, adding a new level of depth to the Pilot squad.

Additionally, the University

Malde, who European Under-20 Cross Coun-try Championships.

The team has managed to se-cure tons of invaluable running skill and diversity with these new recruits.

Although the freshmen have the promise to become major players in the squad, Conner said it was still too early to tell how they could contribute.

“We need to get to the end of the season healthy and ready to

go,” Connor said. “We have the potential to be better than we were last year.”

In addition to these two fresh-men recruits, the men’s team is also returning two of the school’s best runners, sophomore Alfred Kipchumba and pre-dental grad-uate Tommy Betterbed, who red- shirted in 2005.

After struggling last season with stress fractures and a rough close to the season, Betterbed returns this year hoping to go to nationals and, Conner said, come away with an All-American title. The All-American race which

American title.“I’m looking forward to going

back to nationals, improving on last year … maybe stay healthy for a change,” Betterbed said.

The women’s cross country squad also had a great showing at the meet on Friday. Head Coach

of the women’s squad, Ian Solof, said the team had quite a bit of potential.

“The women’s team is looking -

ence, but we have quite a bit of talent and the potential to have a good season, ” Solof said.

Focusing on running early races, Solof thinks that it is too early to tell how the women’s cross country squad will do.

“Some of them haven’t run for the team yet, some of them have run for one season,” Solof said.

However, by running the early -

ence for the younger people,” So-lof thinks that the team, which al-ready has talent and depth, could have a great season this year.

Although the women’s squad

senior Lyndy Davis, sophomore

and fourth place in the Friday meet.

“We ran our top freshman,” Solof said. “I thought she did a

going to be a varsity contribu-tor.”

With these fresh recruits and older returnees, Solof and Con-ner are both hopeful for a strong season.

With another big meet at Uni-versity of Oregon on Oct. 2, the teams will be hard at work, prac-ticing and preparing for the late fall event.

Continued from page 16

SOCCER: 7-0 start to season

Courtesy of Kimberley SpirSophomore Lyndy Davis races ahead of Gonzaga’s Molly Funk. The two would finish first and second, respectively, at Pier Park.

Continued from page 16

XC:

“We have the potential to be better than we were last year.”! Rob Conner, Men’s Cross Country Head

Coach

ADVERTISEMENT

West Coast Conference Standings:Women’s Soccer

1) #2 Portland (7-0-0)2) Pepperdine (4-1-0)3) #10 Santa Clara (5-2-0)4) #18 San Diego (5-2-1)5) San Francisco (4-1-2)6) LMU (4-3-0)7) Saint Mary’s (4-3-0)

The Pilots won the Nike Invitational this past week-end, defeating no. 11 Illinois 4-1 and the University of Miami 2-0. Michelle En-yeart became the third Pilot to earn National Player of the Week honors. The Pilots now travel to Texas to face Texas A&M Friday at 5, and Southern Methodist on Sunday at 11:30 a.m.

Men’s Soccer

1) San Diego (3-0-0)2) Gonzaga (3-1-2)3) #18 LMU (3-1-0)4) Portland (2-1-1)5) Santa Clara (2-2-0)6) #15 San Francisco (2-0-1)7) Saint Mary’s (2-0-2)

The Pilots claimed the Smith Barney Classic tournament title in Vermont this past weekend. The Pilots tied the Vermont Catamounts on Friday and beat New Hamp-shire 1-0 to win the tourna-ment. The Pilots now travel to face rival University of Washington tonight at 7.

Volleyball

1) Saint Mary’s (7-1)2) Pepperdine (7-2)3) LMU (7-3)4) #15 San Diego (5-3)5) #23 Santa Clara (5-3)6) San Francisco (5-5)7) Gonzaga (3-7)8) Portland (2-9) Cross Country

The men’s and women’s cross country team raced last week at Pier Park. The

racing primarily their “B” team ran to a third-place

Freshmen Joash Osoro and Trevor Dunbar ran unna-tached and claimed the top two spots in the race.

(courtesy WCCsports.com, portlandpilots.com)

This week in sports

16 The BeaconSports

September 17, 2009

UP bests University of Illinois and !e Miami Hurricanes to claim the Nike Invite

Jordan Schager | THE BEACONJunior Kendra Chandhoke takes a shot against Miami’s Vikki Aloonzo during Sunday’s matchup. The Pilots beat Miami 2-0 to secure the Nike Invitational title. The win also kept the Pilots undefeated at 7-0.

Lisa McMahan Staff Writer

mcmahan11@up.edu

The women’s soccer team proved the seventh time is the charm at last weekend’s Nike In-vitational. The Pilots advanced their record to a perfect 7-0 after

tournament title. Sophomore Michelle Enyeart

was named offensive player of the tournament after scoring four

goals in Friday’s game against the University of Illinois.

The no. 2 Pilots beat out the no. 11 Fighting Illini 4-1 in front of over 3,500 fans on Fri-day night. Within minutes of the

goal, unassisted. Junior Kendra Chandhoke, assisted by sopho-

off a corner kick for the second goal. The Pilots pounded in an-other point before halftime when Enyeart fought the Fighting Illini keeper to a through ball.

Illinois battled back with a goal after halftime, but Portland retaliated less than a minute later when Enyeart, assisted by sopho-more Halley Kreminski, put the ball in the net and a point on the scoreboard, rounding out the

score at 4-1. “It was another good per-

formance against another great crowd here at Merlo Field,” said Head Women’s Soccer Coach Garrett Smith.

Two days later, smaller crowds and cloudy skies did not stop the Pilots from battling the Miami

Hurricanes to a 2-0 Sunday shut-out.

“It felt like a lot more than that,” said Smith, referring to the

Finishing the game with an impressive 26 shots on goal, the Pilots were not discouraged by the points on the scoreboard.

“It would have been nice to see us put a few more in the ‘goals’ column instead of the ‘shots’ col-umn, but we always talk about being concerned when we stop creating opportunities, and not when we stop scoring goals,” said Smith.

Enyeart, assisted by junior

shot to evade Miami goalkeeper

took advantage of a free kick to neatly place the second shot in

See Soccer, page 15

Jordan Schager | THE BEACONThe men’s cross country team takes off at Pier Park last Friday. The Pilots took seventh place in the NCAA finals last year and this year hope to have an equally strong season, after gaining a very strong recruiting class which includes two of the top recruits in the nation.

Nicholas Slepnikoff Staff Writer

slepniko10@up.edu

Although soccer continues to make headlines, the University of Portland has once again gained an invaluable athletic crop of new freshmen recruits.

However, instead of being in the realm of basketball or soccer, these new cross country recruits have the potential to revolution-

Portland.The Pilot Men’s Cross Coun-

try squad, who took seventh in the national’s, third in the regional’s behind Stanford and Oregon and

tied a record for the highest place a Portland men’s cross country team has reached, showed plenty of promise last season.

These new recruits open only more possibilities.

Running at Pier Park this past

two of the top incoming recruits in the country, freshmen Trevor

Dunbar and Joash Osoro. -

spectively, at the West Coast Preview Meet, Head Coach Rob Conner, who chose to run JV and freshmen runners in this early meet, felt that these new recruits

See XC, page 15

Women’s Soccer blasts away competition

John McCarty Staff Writer

mccarty12@up.edu

When the Congregation of Holy Cross took over the school in 1902, it was a small, all-boys school called Columbia Univer-sity and there were no sports at all.

Because Columbia was Notre Dame’s sister school, it was im-portant to the administration that its students not be seen as a bunch of jocks. Initially, the Co-lumbia administration saw sports as a detriment to student life and academics. The students felt oth-erwise and many sports programs began the following school year.

Football and basketball quickly rose to prominence as the favorite sports on campus with baseball not far behind. The dominant sport was football and the Columbia squad attracted many famous coaches like for-mer Notre Dame stars Edward Madigan and Maurice Smith.

As the school grew, so did the athletes, and by the early 1930’s the football, basketball and base-ball teams were regularly posting winning seasons.

In 1928, the men’s basketball

games played in the brand new Howard Hall.

“I can’t believe Howard used to be our home court,” sophomore

See History, page 14

UP sports history