mulkey « Search Results

Search Results

Jul

2012

Lady Bears — and their biggest fan — enjoy President’s welcome at White House

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Athletics, Honors, Photo Galleries, Service, Videos

Lady Bears with President Obama Even an occasion as special as a visit to the White House would not have been the same for the Baylor Lady Bears if their biggest fan hadn’t been able to enjoy the experience, too.

Thus, members of the Baylor women’s basketball team were excited to learn that 11-year-old Haley Klepper would accompany them in Washington, D.C., as President Barack Obama hosted the national champions at the White House on Wednesday.

[SEE: Video of the entire event || Video and photos of the team's day in D.C.]

Klepper, the daughter of longtime Baylor supporters, suffers from a rare disorder that has decreased her mobility and hearing. When head coach Kim Mulkey learned of the situation, she made Haley and her sister Hannah practically a part of the team. The sisters were given their own locker at the Ferrell Center, and throughout the Lady Bears’ 40-0 season the two spent time with the players at practices and before games. When the team won the national title, the players pulled Haley and Hannah up on stage to share the moment.

Thus, it seemed only right that the Kleppers would get to join the team for this honor, too — and Obama even noted as much in his short address. “Haley is as brave as can be and has gone through some struggles, but when the team found out about Haley … they immediately took her under their wing,” said the President. “We’re thrilled to have Haley here.”

President Obama also congratulated the Lady Bears on their successes both on the field and off, noting their GPAs and history of community service along with their undefeated record. “This team sets a terrific example for girls everywhere — as athletes, as scholars, as leaders in their community,” said Obama. “I could not be prouder of this team.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time the Lady Bears have visited the White House; the team was also invited back in 2005 after winning the program’s first national title. [See photos from that visit.]

Sic ’em, Lady Bears!

Jul

2012

Bears match best-ever finish in all-sport Directors’ Cup standings

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Athletics, Honors

Year of the Bear Baylor trophies

With all 19 sports reaching the postseason during the Year of the Bear and topped by the Lady Bears’ national championship, Baylor came in at No. 25 in the 2011-12 Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings released last month by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

The finish matched the Bears’ best-ever placing in the standings, which use a mathematical formula to sum up how each university did across its entire range of varsity athletic programs. The Bears’ 19 varsity sports were the fewest of any team in this year’s top 25.

[YEAR OF THE BEAR, from Baylor Magazine: Why Baylor may have just had the best year in NCAA history || Kim Mulkey on the Lady Bears || Men's hoops, baseball, equestrian and other spring sports success]

This marks the sixth time Baylor has finished in the top 35 during Ian McCaw’s eight full seasons as director of athletics. Baylor finished third among the state of Texas’ nine Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) programs, behind only Texas (No. 6) and Texas A&M (9), and fifth among all private FBS institutions, after Stanford, Southern California, Duke and Notre Dame.

The Bears placed fourth in the Big 12 for 2011-12, behind Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma (14) but ahead of Oklahoma State (42), Iowa State (46), Missouri (49), Kansas (56), Kansas State (62) and Texas Tech (71). The Bears also finished with a higher ranking than incoming conference members TCU (45) and West Virginia (52).

Baylor.edu/Nation and BaylorBears.com both have excellent recaps of the Year of the Bear, from the popular “Baylor Rising” highlight video to a series of infographics illustrating the year’s highlights.

And let’s not forget a school-record 630 student-athletes were named to the Big 12’s Commissioner’s Honor Roll, the number of Baylor faces in both the NFL and NBA have increased and Baylor’s impressive presence at the ESPYs.

The Year of the Bear was fun — and a great beginning to the Decade of the Bear.

Sic ’em, Baylor athletics!

Jul

2012

Baylor ties collegiate record with 3 ESPY wins

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Alumni, Athletics, Honors, Videos

Baylor tied an ESPN record Wednesday night, as Robert Griffin III and Brittney Griner combined to win three awards at the 2012 ESPYs.

Griffin and Griner were named top male and female college athlete, respectively — the first time one school has claimed both honors. Griner also brought home the award for best female athlete, beating out tennis’ Maria Sharapova, skiing’s Lindsey Vonn and soccer’s Abby Wambach.

No school has ever won more than Baylor’s three ESPYs in a single year. In fact, only five schools have ever won more than three total ESPYS in the event’s 20 years.

[WATCH: Inside Baylor Sports visits with RG3 and the Lady Bears on the ESPYs red carpet || With Griner at the ESPYs, from takeoff to winning]

I tried to keep track of how many times Baylor showed up on the broadcast throughout the evening, but with the Bears and Lady Bears nominated for six different awards, I quickly lost count. (In other categories, RG3 lost out to the Knicks’ Jeremy Lin for best breakthrough athlete; Kim Mulkey was bested by the New York Giants’ Tom Coughlin for best coach/manager, and the Lady Bear basketball team was beat by the Miami Heat for best team.)

Griffin also was called on to present the award for best moment, won by Tim Tebow’s overtime touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas in the NFL playoffs. RG3 and Griner join three other Baylor alums who have won ESPYs: Michael Johnson won five from 1994-2000 (best male track athlete, 1994-96-97-00; best male athlete, 1997), and Jeremy Wariner followed suit as best track and field athlete in 2007. Director John Lee Hancock has won best sports movie twice, for The Rookie (2002) and The Blind Side (2010).

The national champion Lady Bears’ next honor comes next Wednesday, when they will meet with President Barack Obama at the White House.

Sic ’em, Baylor ESPY winners!

Jun

2012

Baylor leads the nation with six ESPY nominations

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Alumni, Athletics, Honors, Just for Fun

Robert Griffin III, Brittney Griner, Kim Mulkey and the Lady Bear basketball team are all among those nominated for the 2012 ESPY Awards, ESPN announced on Wednesday.

The school-record six ESPY nominations covered categories from best team (Lady Bears), best female athlete (Griner) and best female college athlete (Griner again) to best breakthrough athlete (RG3), best male college athlete (RG3 again) and best coach/manager (Mulkey).

To put the six nominations in perspective, here’s a breakdown of nominees by metropolitan area: Los Angeles (10), New York City (8), Baylor campus (6), Miami (5), San Francisco (5). Only the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Kings (five each) scored more nominations than Baylor women’s basketball (four), and no organization has more than Baylor’s total of six nominations.

This isn’t the first time a Baylor Bear has been nominated for an ESPY. Michael Johnson won five ESPYs between 1994 and 2000 (best male track athlete, 1994-96-97-00; best male athlete, 1997), and Jeremy Wariner followed suit as best track and field athlete in 2007. Director John Lee Hancock won best sports movie twice, for The Rookie (2002) and The Blind Side (2010). Bears have also been nominated for best team (Lady Bears, 2005), best male Olympic performance (Wariner, 2005) and best breakthrough athlete (Griner, 2010). (Complete lists of past nominees available online are spotty at best; if you know of others, please let us know.)

Fans can vote for their favorites in each category at espn.com/espys, then tune in to ESPN to see who wins on July 11 at 8 p.m. CT.

Sic ’em, Baylor ESPY nominees!

Jun

2012

The Year of the Bear: What was your favorite moment?

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Alumni, Athletics, Student life, Videos

Year of the Bear collage

The Year of the Bear is now in the books, and what a year it was.

First, the big picture: Two national championships. Two national players of the year, including the Heisman Trophy winner. NCAA records for combined wins in the Big Three and Big Four sports. Three Big 12 titles. All 19 varsity sports reaching postseason play.

And then there were the individual moments… Football’s season-opening win over TCU that launched RG3 into the Heisman spotlight, and the last-second win over OU that sealed the deal. Soccer’s return to the NCAA tournament after a 12-year absence. Kim Mulkey’s 300th win. Nick Florence’s second-half heroics against Texas Tech. Griffin’s “unbelievably believable” Heisman Trophy win and acceptance speech. The Bears’ first bowl victory since 1992.

The announcement of RG3 as the NFL’s No. 2 overall pick and cover boy for EA’s “NCAA Football 2013″. Brittney Griner’s two NCAA tournament dunks. 40-0. Postseason runs for men’s basketball (Elite Eight), men’s and women’s tennis (Sweet 16) and baseball (Super Regional). Baseball’s 24-game win streak.

Thank you, Baylor Nation, for your support this year. You responded to all this success by setting program records for attendance in football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball. And now it looks like one more treat is on the way — and one more opportunity for Baylor Nation to step forward — as Baylor Stadium moves closer and closer to reality.

Baylor Athletics this week launched a new website, baylor-stadium.com, which will document the design and construction processes of the future on-campus home of Baylor football. Check out the site for a virtual tour video, renderings, stadium facts and more.

The #YearoftheBear has been fun; this video sums it up well. Now it’s time to make this the Decade of the Bear.

Sic ’em, Baylor Athletics and Baylor Nation!

May

2012

Baylor We Are: Winning with Integrity

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Academics, Athletics, Baylor 2012, Honors, Pro Futuris

Kim Mulkey in City of Waco Baylor women's basketball parade

Rather than spin a lengthy narrative about Baylor’s athletic success in 2011-12, let’s just go straight to the facts:

80 combined wins across the “big three” sports (football, men’s and women’s basketball), the most of any school in NCAA history.
118 combined wins (and counting) across the “big four” (FB, MBB, WBB and baseball), rapidly approaching the record of 123 set by Texas in 2003-04.
Only the second school ever to win the Heisman Trophy and earn consensus national player of the year honors in basketball in one year.
14 of Baylor’s 19 varsity programs have already reached the postseason this year — matching the school record for the fourth straight year — and the other five are all on pace to join them. (Only twice in the history of the Big 12 has a school had all of its teams reach the postseason in the same year.)

And while this has clearly been the best year in Baylor athletic history, it didn’t come out of nowhere. Let’s look back over the last few years:

36 Big 12 titles since Ian McCaw was hired as Director of Athletics in September 2003 — third-most in the league behind only Texas and Texas A&M — across six sports (baseball, women’s basketball, equestrian, softball, and men’s and women’s tennis).
Three NCAA team championships in that same time span (men’s tennis in 2004, women’s basketball in 2005 and 2012) — the first three in school history.
Seven straight top-50 finishes in the NACDA Directors’ Cup (which recognizes success across all sports) and on track for likely the best finish in BU history this year.

Furthermore, Baylor’s student-athletes have done all this while also excelling off the field. Individual successes have abounded (like Robert Griffin III leaving Baylor with not only a Heisman but a nearly completed master’s degree, all in less than five years), as have team honors (like the eight Baylor programs recognized in the last six years for academically ranking among the top 10% in their sport). And that doesn’t even begin to consider the spiritual formation Baylor emphasizes (like the regular service opportunities and department-sponsored mission trips that go out several times each year).

Sic ’em, Baylor athletics!

Apr

2012

Big 12-leading Baylor baseball rides record 21-game win streak into series vs. Aggies

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Athletics, Honors

Baylor baseball 2012 It’s a testament to just how much good stuff is going on at Baylor that it’s already late April and we are only now getting around to talking about Baylor baseball. But oh, is there plenty to talk about.

Most notably, the No. 6-ranked Bears roll into this weekend’s series against No. 2 Texas A&M riding a program-record 21-game winning streak. The run matches the longest win streak in Big 12 baseball history, as Baylor hasn’t lost a game in more than a month. (Come to think of it, 2011-12 has been a year of successful streaks for Baylor athletics: football won its last six, men’s hoops started 17-0, and of course the Lady Bears went 40-0 on the year.)

Baylor baseball’s win streak has covered the entire conference slate to date, as the Bears have started Big 12 play an astounding 15-0. To put that in context, the previous best start to Big 12 conference play by any team was a 7-0 run by Texas in 1999. The Bears have a 4.5-game lead in the Big 12 with a third of the season left to go, doing it with an offense that leads the league in most every major category and a pitching staff that ranks among the league’s best as well.

At the helm of the Bears is Steve Smith, BSED ’86, who earlier this week became the winningest head coach in Baylor history. Smith earned his 650th career win on Tuesday to pass his predecessor, Mickey Sullivan, BS ’55, for whom Smith played at Baylor in the early 1980s. Smith is one of just six coaches in Baylor history ever to win even 300 games; four of the six are current head coaches.

This weekend’s match-up against Texas A&M is the last series to be played between the two longtime foes as conference opponents. The games begin tonight in College Station, then move to Waco Saturday (6:35 p.m.) and Sunday (2:05 p.m.); both games in Waco will be televised locally on MYTX. Saturday, the McDonald’s Family Four Pack offers fans four tickets, four drinks, four hot dogs and two Happy Meal vouchers for just $36, while Sunday is Texas Farm Bureau Insurance Family Sunday, as all kids 12 and under get in free. Saturday’s game will also feature a post-game fireworks show. (Click here for details on all the promotions.)

Sic ’em, Baylor baseball!

Apr

2012

Aikman, Wingo and Mulkey headline successful event supporting Baylor nursing scholarships

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Academics, Alumni, Photo Galleries, Student life

With a Hall of Fame quarterback, an ESPN personality and a two-time national champion coach headlining the event, it’s no wonder that last weekend’s “Going for the Gold Gala,” presented by the Louise Herrington School of Nursing, was perhaps the largest fundraising event in Baylor history.

The sold-out crowd of 700 Baylor nursing supporters included plenty of big names, but few were bigger than the night’s three featured guests: Former Dallas Cowboys QB Troy Aikman, the father of a Baylor nursing major; NFL Live host Trey Wingo, BA ’85, the night’s emcee; and keynote speaker Kim Mulkey, fresh off leading the Baylor women’s basketball program to its second national title. (Click here for a photo gallery from the event.)

With donors stepping forward to cover the cost of the event, the evening raised more than half a million dollars toward endowed scholarships for Baylor nursing students as part of The President’s Scholarship Initiative. For more than 100 years, the Baylor University Louise Herrington School of Nursing has educated leaders for worldwide service in the nursing field, distinctly integrating Christian faith into an accredited program of nursing practice, education and research. Today, most Baylor nursing majors take two years worth of core classes on the Waco campus, then complete their education at the nursing school’s location on the campus of Baylor University Medical Center near downtown Dallas.

Sic ’em, Baylor nursing!

[Pictured above: Aikman, Mulkey and Wingo with John, BA '50, JD '52, and Marie Chiles, longtime supporters of Baylor nursing and 2012 recipients of Baylor's Founders Medal]

Apr

2012

Griner joins RG3 in bringing national player of the year honors to Baylor

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Athletics, Honors

Brittney Griner billboard

Following an outstanding season that culminated in the program’s second national championship, Lady Bear star Brittney Griner became just the third women’s basketball player ever to sweep all four major national player of the year honors, claiming the 2011-12 Naismith Trophy, Wooden Award, Wade Trophy and AP Player of the Year.

Since 1961, when the AP awarded its first national player of the year award, only three schools have ever won both the Heisman and a basketball national player of the year award in the same academic year: 1996-97 Florida (Danny Wuerffel and Wade Trophy winner DeLisha Milton), 2008-09 Oklahoma (Sam Bradford and consensus POY Blake Griffin), and now 2011-12 Baylor with Robert Griffin III and Griner.

Griner’s head coach, Kim Mulkey, was named Big 12 Coach of the Year for the second straight season, then earned National Coach of the Year recognition from the WBCA, AP and the Naismith folks, and sophomore Odyssey Sims provided a nice balance for Griner as one of eight finalists for the Lieberman Award, given annually to the top point guard in women’s basketball. (The winner will be announced April 18.)

Senior Lindsay Palmer’s NCAA Elite 89 award is also worth singling out. The honor is given to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 89 championships. Palmer, a three-time Academic All-Big 12 honoree with a 3.985 GPA majoring in sports management, also received the award in 2010 when the women reached the Final Four.

Other 2011-12 Lady Bears individual honors:

Griner: USBWA Player of the Year , ESPN.com Player of the Year, WBCA National Defensive Player of the Year; first team AP All-America; Wooden, WBCA and USBWA all-American; Big 12 Player and Defensive Player of the Year; first team All-Big 12 and Big 12 All-Defensive Team; most outstanding player/MVP at the Preseason WNIT, Big 12 Championships, Des Moines Regional and Final Four
Sims: Finalist for the Wade Trophy and Wooden Award; second team AP All-America; WBCA, USBWA all-American; first team All-Big 12 and Big 12 All-Defensive Team; all-tournament selection at Preseason WNIT, Big 12 Championships, Des Moines Regional and Final Four
Ashley Field: First team Academic All-Big 12
Kimetria Hayden: Honorable mention All-Big 12
Makenzie Robertson: First team Academic All-Big 12
Destiny Williams: WBCA all-American (honorable mention); second team All-Big 12; all-tournament selection at Big 12 Championshops and Des Moines Regional

Sic ’em, Lady Bears!

[The billboard pictured above, plus similar designs featuring Mulkey and Sims, went up in Dallas, Houston and Waco immediately following the Lady Bears' national championship victory last week, and will go up in Austin soon.]

Apr

2012

Baylor Lady Bears: 2011-12 NCAA national champions!

Posted by The Baylor Proud Team in Athletics, Honors, Photo Galleries, Videos

Baylor Lady Bears, 2011-12 National Champions

Undefeated. No. 1 in the country, wire to wire. The first NCAA basketball team (men’s or women’s) ever to win 40 games. And last but not least, national champions. That’s your 2011-12 Baylor Lady Bears.

All season long, this squad showed that it’s more than a one-person team. With the pressure on, however, National Coach of the Year Kim Mulkey turned to Brittney Griner, and she was everything you’d expect from the consensus national player of the year; her 26 points, 13 rebounds and 5 blocks led the Lady Bears to an 80-61 win over Notre Dame Tuesday night and the program’s second national championship in seven years.

[LINKS: 7 minutes of highlights, interviews and analysis from ESPN || More analysis from ESPN || Photos from the win (here, here and here) || "Baylor's biggest fan," a moving ESPN feature that shows the Lady Bears' heart || A season in photos || Send your message of congratulations to the team]

Once again, a Baylor athletic program has drawn the nation’s eyes to our university (3.8 million viewers tuned in to the Lady Bears’ Final Four victory), and they’ve seen success on the court and standout student-athletes off the court. Baylor football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball combined to win 80 games — more than any other school’s big-three sports have ever tallied in one year — and each program set new program highs for final national ranking (FB 12, MBB 8, WBB 1). With such shared success, it was great to see President Ken Starr joined at the game Tuesday night by Heisman winner Robert Griffin III, head football coach Art Briles and head men’s basketball coach Scott Drew, all cheering on the Lady Bears.

[AVAILABLE: Lady Bears 2011-12 National Champions t-shirts (here, here, here and here), hats and more from the Baylor Bookstore || Order Invincible: The 2011-12 Baylor Lady Bears, a 96-page, full-color book from Baylor Press]

What could make a national championship even better? Mulkey’s squad — now 78-4 in their last 82 games — returns its top six scorers and rebounders next year: Griner, All-Americans Odyssey Sims and Destiny Williams, All-Big 12 guard Kimetria Hayden, Brooklyn Pope and Jordan Madden.

Celebrate the team by welcoming the Lady Bears home to the Ferrell Center Wednesday afternoon. Doors open at 3 p.m., and a ceremony honoring the team will begin at 3:30 p.m. If you can’t make it, video of the event will be streamed live on BaylorBears.com.

Sic ’em, Lady Bears!