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UC Riverside Athletics Association

From The Desk Of The Athletics Director: June 2017

Greetings Highlanders Fans!

It is hard to believe, but with Tayler Fleming's All-America performance at the NCAA Track & Field Championships on June 8, the Highlanders 2016-17 season has come to an end.

We celebrated the year's successes at our annual Scotty Awards in late May, honoring our many athletic, academic and community achievements. You can read about our honorees at gohighlanders.com. Also, for the first time, you can watch the awards show in its entirety, including the hour-long gold carpet pre-show, thanks to our friends at Riverside Television.

We also closed out the year with our annual 99 For Title IX fundraiser, at the Riverside Art Museum, which raised more than $60,000 to support women's athletics at UC Riverside. That brings the total raised over the past eight years to more than $200,000.

My thanks to all who came out in support of this tremendous event, but in particular to our organizing committee members, and committee chairs Amy S. Harrison & Kim Devlin.

Many involved with 99 For Title IX have been an integral part of it since its inception, and we see the fruits of their labor on a daily basis. Tayler Fleming's performance is just one of many examples from throughout the year. Our Women's Golf Team closed out the year with a near epic comeback at the Big West Conference Championship, which the Highlanders hosted at Oak Quarry Golf Club. Battling back from down 20 stokes on the final day, Coach Ritchie and her troops closed to within one before falling to eventual champion Cal Poly by a single shot.
 
Sophomore Jakeishya Le also finished in second place in the race for the individual league title, coming up one shot short of forcing a playoff. Her season continued in the NCAA Regionals, however, as she earned an at-large berth to travel to Lubbock, Texas, where she finished 63rd.

Her teammate, Hailey Wian, became UC Riverside's first three-time Big West Scholar-Athlete of the Year honoree, and was also our 2016-17 nominee for NCAA Woman of the Year.

Of course, the primary mission of the university is the education of its student body, and to that end, the Highlanders celebrated their graduating seniors in a June 16 ceremony. Each senior received their senior sash to wear during graduation, and those who played four years of intercollegiate athletics were presented with their four-year pins. The Highlander Student Athlete Graduation Celebration was broadcast on Facebook live, and you can watch it in its entirety on our Facebook page.

This year's graduating class boasts a cumulative 3.01 grade point average, was named to the Highlander Honor Roll 277 times, to the Dean's List 80 times, and to the Chancellor's List on nine occasions.

Three of our student-athletes are continuing their playing careers in the professional ranks following the 2017 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft. Pitcher Ryan Lillie was taken by the Miami Marlins in the fifth round, while outfielder Mark Contreras went to the Minnesota Twins in the ninth, and pitcher Alex Fagalde was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 30th round.

We have a lot of work to do this summer, and I will be traveling quite a bit, meeting with potential Highlanders supporters all over the country as we continue to raise the profile of our department to compete on a national level. We are also continuing our fundraising efforts for the Bear's Den. If you would like to make a donation to the project, which will transform our antiquated locker room space into a state-of-the-art athletics facility, or take a tour of the area to experience our vision for the new space, please contact Krysta Plato via email or at (951) 827-6823.

In the meantime, please enjoy your summer. Our student-athletes will be back on campus for fall competitions before you know it, and we are looking forward to another great year for UC Riverside Athletics in 2017-18.

All the best, and Go Highlanders!
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