A Message From the Athletics Director - May
Hurricane Fans,
Summer is nearly upon us but there is still plenty of excitement around Miami Athletics as our spring sports point toward the postseason.
Gino DiMare’s baseball team wrapped up its regular season with a series win over Duke to finish with a 38-17 record. The Hurricanes went 18-12 in conference play, good for the fourth seed heading into this week’s ACC Tournament in Durham. UM will open the tournament against Virginia on Thursday at 3 p.m. Gino has done a remarkable job in his first season as head coach as the 17th-ranked Canes are squarely in the hunt to host an NCAA regional at The Light for the first time since 2016. Good luck to the Canes in Durham and on the Road to Omaha!
Last week the ACC announced that two of our first three football games this season will air on the new ACC Network — the Hurricanes’ conference opener at North Carolina on Saturday, Sept. 7, at 8 p.m., as well as UM’s home opener against Bethune-Cookman on Saturday, Sept. 14, at 4 p.m. We couldn’t be more excited for the launch of the ACC Network, which will provide us with a tremendous platform to help promote and showcase our teams, our student-athletes and our University to a wide audience.
Multiple providers have already agreed to carry ACCN, including DIRECTV, Fios, Google Fiber, Hulu, Optimum and PlayStation Vue. But there are still providers that haven’t yet decided to carry the network, including Comcast, Dish and Spectrum. I encourage Canes fans to visit getaccn.com to see if their provider is planning to carry the network. If not, they should call that provider and demand ACCN! We want everybody to be able to watch every Canes game for every sport this coming season.
Nine of our programs were recognized for perfect single-year scores of 1,000 in the 2017-18 Academic Progress Report (APR), released earlier this month by the NCAA. The Miami programs earning perfect scores for the 2017-18 school year were women’s basketball, men’s cross country, men’s diving, golf, women’s soccer, men’s tennis, women’s tennis, men’s track and field and volleyball. Plus, six of those programs – men’s and women’s cross country, golf, men’s and women’s tennis and volleyball – earned perfect multi-year scores of 1,000 for the four-year period from 2014-15 to 2017-18. It is a remarkable achievement for nine of our teams to post perfect APR scores for 2017-18. Our student-athletes continue to excel in the classroom, and our dedicated coaches and academic staff members work tirelessly to help them achieve these results.
Both our men’s and women’s tennis teams are represented at the NCAA Singles Championships this week in Orlando. Estela Perez-Somarriba is the top seed in the women’s bracket, seeking to become UM’s first national champion since Audra Cohen in 2007. Estela has advanced to the Sweet 16 for the third consecutive year and looks to continue her tournament run Wednesday night. The doubles tandem of Daevenia Achong and Daniella Roldan also qualified for NCAAs, dropping their first-round match to Tulsa. Adria Soriano Barrera, the first UM men’s player in the tournament since 2016, lost a tough, first-round match to second-seeded JJ Wolf of Ohio State. Good luck to Estela, and congratulations to Daevenia, Daniella and Adria!
Amy Deem’s track and field squad is preparing for the NCAA Outdoor East Regionals in Jacksonville, which start Thursday. Our women’s team finished second at the recent ACC Outdoor Championships, while our men’s squad placed eighth. Michelle Atherley won the ACC heptathlon title and will look to add an NCAA heptathlon title to her trophy case after winning the NCAA pentathlon earlier this year. Good luck to Michelle and all of our track and field athletes as they gear up for NCAAs!
Rowing competed at the ACC Championships in Clemson, S.C., this past weekend as the Hurricanes’ second varsity four earned a bronze medal, helping Miami tie North Carolina for seventh overall. Tessa White-Parsons earned second-team All-ACC honors. Congratulations to Tessa and the rest of our rowers!
We are excited to announce that both of our basketball teams are going on a 10-day tour of Italy in August. The men’s tour (August 9-18) includes visits to Rome, Florence and Como, while the women’s trip (August 7-16) features stops in Rome, Florence and Venice. The men will play four games and the women will play three, with each team having at least one per stop. Both teams’ opponents are still to be determined. Our fans are encouraged to join us on tour! To learn more about the men’s tour, contact Chris Cohen in the Hurricane Club at cohen@miami.edu. For additional details on the women’s tour, fans can contact Alfonso Restrepo in the Hurricane Club at fonzi@miami.edu.
While our Greentree Practice Fields were being resurfaced all of our on-campus spring football practices took place in the beautiful Carol Soffer Indoor Practice Facility. I want to again extend my heartfelt thanks to Carol Soffer and her family for the lead gift for this magnificent facility. We have already raised more than $36 million but are not done yet — and we still need your support. Your donations will ensure that this facility continues to be one of the best in the country. Visit Give2IPF.com to pledge your support.
For the latest information on each of our varsity teams, please be sure to visit HurricaneSports.com or follow us on Twitter @MiamiHurricanes. Enjoy this month’s magazine!
Go Canes!
Blake James
