A Message From the Athletics Director - June
Hurricane Fans,
We have officially completed another successful season at The U!
Thirteen of our 18 programs advanced to NCAA postseason play. Our women’s indoor track and field team won the ACC title for the third time in four seasons. Two Hurricanes captured individual NCAA championships – Michelle Athlerley in the women’s indoor pentathlon and Estela Perez-Somarriba in women’s tennis. In addition, two UM divers – David Dinsmore and Briadam Herrera – placed second at the NCAA Championships.
Overall, Hurricane student-athletes earned four ACC Player of the Year honors, 68 All-ACC selections, 11 individual ACC titles and 35 All-America accolades. Randy Ableman was named ACC Men’s and Women’s Diving Coach of the Year and Amy Deem was named ACC Indoor Track & Field Women’s Coach of the Year.
Our accomplishments are a tribute to the hard work and dedication of our student-athletes, coaches and staff, as well as the continued support we receive from donors, alumni and fans to make it all possible.
We’re just two months away from the launch of the new 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. Two of our first three football games will be televised on ACCN — our conference opener at North Carolina on Saturday, Sept. 7, as well as our home opener against Bethune-Cookman on Saturday, Sept. 14.
Last week ACCN announced its broadcast schedule for fall Olympic sports, including UM’s soccer and volleyball programs. Our home soccer game against Pittsburgh on Sunday, September 29 will be on ACCN at 7 p.m. Two Canes volleyball games – Wednesday, October 30 at Florida State and Friday, November 15 at home against NC State – will also be televised on ACCN.
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, AT&T U-Verse 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.
In addition to her thrilling national championship triumph, Estela also won the prestigious Honda Sport Award for Tennis, presented annually by the Collegiate Women Sports Awards for the past 43 years to the top women athletes in 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports. Estela is the fourth student-athlete in Miami history to win the elite award, including the third tennis player. Congratulations to Estela on her remarkable season!
Jim Larrañaga added Bill Courtney to his staff last week as an assistant coach. Bill, a former head coach at Cornell, most recently served as an assistant at DePaul, and he has also coached at Bowling Green, George Mason, Providence, Virginia and Virginia Tech. Welcome to Coral Gables, Bill!
Three Hurricane greats will have their names on the 2020 ballot for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. Defensive lineman Jerome Brown and linebackers Ray Lewis and Dan Morgan are among the 76 players and five coaches from FBS included on the ballot. The announcement of the 2020 Class will be made in January in New Orleans. Congratulations to all three men and their families on this tremendous honor!
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 game per stop.
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 $38 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. I hope your summer is off to a wonderful start and I hope you enjoy this month’s magazine!
Go Canes!
Blake James
