SAN ANGELO – As the Panamanian Women’s National Team prepares for the start of World Cup Qualifying in November, the Belles’ Gabby Villagrand receives another call-up to play in a set of friendlies against Costa Rica at Costa Rica’s La Sabana National Stadium, to be played on September 18 and 21, the Panamanian Football Federation announced on Sunday.

Villagrand has previously made four appearances for Las Canaleras, scoring her first international goal against the Dominican Republic on July 10, 2021 in a 5-0 victory for Panama.

“I think of everyone that I’m representing on my dad’s side of the family,” said Villagrand, who is eligible to represent Panama because her dad, Ricardo, was born and raised in Panama before coming to the U.S. for college. “Anytime I’m there [representing Panama], I’m just thinking what an honor it is to be able to not only represent the country, but I know I’m making my family proud by doing so.”

Due to Villagrand’s commitment with the national team, the forward will miss the Belles’ games against New Mexico Highlands on Saturday as well as the Belles’ conference opener next Wednesday in San Antonio versus St. Mary’s.

“I don’t want to leave my team hanging but I talked with Coach about it, and we agreed that it was the best decision, with it being two games at the beginning of the season, so now is probably the best time to go,” said the senior, who scored her first goal of the season last Thursday versus East Central and started her first match of the season on Saturday against SWOSU. “It’s definitely hard, I’m going to be sad, but I’m excited to watch and support from Costa Rica.”

The post Angelo State’s Gabby Villagrand called up to Panama National Team appeared first on Texas Sports.

The Lone Star Conference will begin its 90th season of competition tomorrow as the league kicks off its year-long celebration with the release of a new public service announcement (PSA).

The new announcement highlights the 90-year history of one of the oldest and most distinguished conferences in all of Division II, narrated by one of the greatest players in LSC and NFL history in former Texas A&M-Kingsville Javelina and NFL Hall of Famer Darrell Green.

Green, a two-sport all-American, was the LSC Football Outstanding Back of the Year in 1982 and was named the Outstanding Male Track Athlete of the Year in back-to-back outdoor track and field seasons in 1982 and 1983. His LSC and Division II 100-meter dash record of 10.08 seconds from 1983 stood for nearly 38 years until it was broken West Texas A&M’s Benjamin Azamati in March 2021.

The release of the PSA marks the beginning of the 90th anniversary celebration in the league that will include online features recognizing the achievements of student-athletes, coaches and administrators. In addition, the conference will highlight important days and games in LSC history, commemorate some of the 76 team national champions, commend top performances in conference history and feature several of the nearly 60 LSC Hall of Honor members.

Founded on April 25, 1931, the LSC has grown from a five-team conference of Texas-based schools to an 18-member league that spans four states (Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arkansas). With 18 members, the LSC is the largest conference in NCAA Division II.

While the LSC has maintained a long-standing tradition of competitive athletic programs for its members, many teams and individuals have gone on to distinguish themselves on the national stage. Entering its 90th year, LSC member institutions have collected 76 NCAA team national championships since the league joined the Division II membership in 1982. 

The LSC’s mission is to foster student participation and success among member institutions in NCAA Division II intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of each institution’s total educational program. The LSC pursues student-athlete development with the highest regard to the principles of academic excellence, graduation success, sportsmanship, ethical conduct, resourcefulness, community service, gender equity and diversity.

Throughout the league’s 90-year history, various institutions have competed under the LSC banner. Today, only Texas A&M-Commerce (then East Texas State) remains from the original group formed in 1931 when North Texas State, Southwest Texas State, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin withdrew from the old Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association.

Since its founding, several institutions have made the LSC their home with the most recent members joining in 2019. Texas A&M-Kingsville (formerly Texas A&I) joined in 1954, and Angelo State in 1968. Conference membership remained within the Texas borders until 1984 when Eastern New Mexico received admittance. Since then, the LSC has included members from Arkansas and Oklahoma. Cameron (1988, 1996) was added near the outset of an expansion phase, while Texas Woman’s (1989) and previous member West Texas A&M (1986, 1993) joined the league soon after. Midwestern State entered early in 1995. In 2016, UT Permian Basin and Western New Mexico were added, with DBU, Lubbock Christian, Oklahoma Christian, St. Edward’s, St. Mary’s, Texas A&M International, UAFS and UT Tyler joining in 2019.

The LSC conducts conference championships in 18 sports (nine men and nine women). Men’s championships include football, soccer, cross country, basketball, baseball, indoor track and field, outdoor track and field, golf and tennis. Women’s titles are determined in volleyball, soccer, cross country, basketball, softball, indoor track and field, outdoor track and field, tennis and golf.

The post Lone Star Conference set to begin 90th season appeared first on Texas Sports.

Aaron Meister remembers something Tamyra Mensah told him back in 2011 when he and another former Wayland Baptist wrestling coach, Johnny Cobb, were trying to convince the budding grappling star to become a WBU Pioneer.

Meister recalls Tamyra saying, ‘I have a heart of gold, Coach.”

Mensah wasn’t referring to her abundant kindness and loving personality, which the world is quickly discovering, but Mensah’s heart-of-gold reference had to do with her very real intention of winning Olympic gold on the wrestling mat.

Fast-forward 10 years and Tamyra Mensah-Stock does, in fact, have a heart of gold.

“We’re all pretty proud today,” Meister said after Mensah-Stock claimed the gold medal in the 68kg women’s freestyle event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Cobb, who started the WBU wrestling program in 2010 after being hired by then-athletics director Dr. Greg Feris, remembers being impressed with Mensah the first time he saw her compete. It was at the Texas state high school championships in Houston, where Tamyra was winning the last of her two state titles, that Cobb told Meister, his then-assistant coach, “We’re going to get those kids. Whatever it takes. That is a talent, right there.”

Cobb was targeting both Tamyra and twin sister Tarkyia, who convinced Tamyra as sophomores at Morton Ranch High School in Katy to give up track & field and go out for wrestling.

“I knew her and her sister were pretty special,” Meister remembered. “Then when they went and placed at nationals that solidified it. I knew they could be pretty good.”

Cobb figured it could be a challenge to land the Mensah twins, since Wayland’s program was only a year old and much more established programs like Oklahoma City University, Campbellsville in Kentucky, King University in Tennessee and Missouri Valley were interested, too.

“We did really well getting in the mix with those guys,” Cobb said.

Cobb and Meister both said being in Texas gave Wayland a leg up on the others, since at the time Wayland was the only college in the state to offer wrestling.

But it was more than just that. Cobb said it was the school’s family atmosphere, and he made sure the Mensah family knew Wayland would care for them.

“I did everything I knew to do to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to take care of you,” Cobb said. “I think she knew I meant it, and that’s what we darn sure tried to do the entire time they were at Wayland.”

Meister agreed.

“After her visit she was pretty well set. We had to talk things over with her mother, and I think she felt like Wayland would be home and the coaching staff cared about her.”

Said Cobb, “They don’t really care how much you know until they know how much you care, and Tamyra was one that that certainly would apply to.”

“It just seemed like after the visit (Wayland) was the right place for them,” Meister said. “We tried to sell them on making history, and in that sense Tamyra is a true Pioneer. She came in and told us what she wanted to do, and Coach Cobb and I did everything we could to get her where she needed to go.”

Tamyra went on to win a pair of Women’s Collegiate Wrestling Association titles at Wayland in 2014 and 2017, in between training for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She won the U.S. Olympics Trials that year but because the U.S. didn’t qualify her weight she wasn’t able to compete in Brazil.

After winning the World Championships in 2019, in addition to numerous other titles, and after the Tokyo Olympics were postponed due to COVID-19, Mensah-Stock won the U.S. Olympic Trials again this year and went on to win all four of her matches in Japan to claim gold.

Cobb and Meister wished they were there to see it happen in person, but due to COVID-19 restrictions spectators are not allowed at the Games. Cobb, though, was in Mensah-Stock’s corner at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Oregon.

“That was a real honor,” said Cobb, who after retiring from Wayland in 2014 became a volunteer coach for Mensah-Stock’s Titan Mercury Wrestling Club. He’s been helping her ever since. “I’m glad I got to help some with the Xs and Os, but she obviously was in really good (coaching) hands at the Olympic Training Center. She couldn’t ask for more.”

Mensah-Stock is actually the second gold medalist Cobb has coached, having also groomed Brandon Slay at Amarillo Tascosa High School before Slay went on to win gold at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Meister, now the wrestling coach at Friends University (Kan.), said he is “beyond proud” of his former Pioneer. He admits to getting emotional just thinking about everything Mensah-Stock has done.

“I’m blessed to be a part of her journey. When you have a true passion and joy for the sport of wrestling and you can help people, it’s a great thing,” he said. “It’s been fun and a dream come true. It’s completely awesome when somebody has a dream and accomplishes it. That’s such a beautiful thing.”

Looking down the road, Cobb isn’t sure what lies ahead for Mensah-Stock, but her arrow couldn’t be pointed any higher.

“She’s a little bit of the face right now for USA Wrestling, for sure on the female said,” he said. “With her only being 28, and with the next Olympic cycle three years away as opposed to four, at 31 she could make a real run at another Olympic medal.

“I anticipate that will be her decision, but I know she’s also anxious to start a family. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”

Whatever Mensah-Stock decides to do next, the 72-year-old Cobb will be proud of her.

“For me it’s like a second daughter situation with T. There’s always been a real close relationship there, kind of like coach/dad.

“Tamyra is just a shining light for everybody. She’s a very sincere, very vivacious young lady. She never met a person she didn’t like.”

The post A Heart of Gold: Former coaches reflect on Olympic champion appeared first on Texas Sports.

Robert (Bob) Mong gets it.

As President of fast-growing University of North Texas at Dallas, the Ohio-raised and educated native surveys his responsibilities with a sweeping view.

His former career — overseeing the daily operation of the award-winning  Dallas Morning News — has now been replaced with a keen awareness of the need for — and importance of — higher learning and the broad social and economic impact UNTD has been designed to provide. Today, Mong keeps careful watch over the expanding array of programs the southern Dallas university makes available to its students. 

Seeing athletics – men’s and women’s basketball, cross-country and track & field – as a newcomer to  the curriculum is but one of the myriad boxes he was determined to check when he first stepped onto the campus.
     
And he needs only to look back to his personal history to judge the importance competitive athletics play in college life.  When recently advised that the Trailblazers had been formally welcomed into the NAIA and Sooner Athletic Conference, his smile rivaled that of Director of Athletics, Jack Allday. 

“It adds to what we’re building here,” he says. “By our offering sports at this level, we’re able to afford a lot of talented young women and men the opportunity to continue participating in activities they – and the entire student body – can enjoy.”

Mong knows. He’s been there.

Even before he established himself as a standout football and baseball player at Haverford College in Philadelphia, the son of a salesman dad and a mother who served as the county auditor had earned the reputation of one of his hometown’s premier athletes. He started young.

As a 12-year-old pitcher-first baseman in Little League in Eaton, Ohio, he homered twice in the last game of his final season to increase his total to a record-setting 12. His .734 batting average for that summer was also a league record.

By the time he entered Easton High School he was a four-sport performer. As a 175-pound running back, receiver, and defensive back, he was coached by the legendary Jack Harbaugh, father of NFL standouts Jim and John.     

“He was a brilliant, innovative coach who knew how to inspire a team,” Mong recalls. “I remember getting ready to play a team that had beaten us by 60 points the year before he came to Eaton High. He studied film and realized their quarterback wasn’t much of a passer. They relied strictly on a power running game. So, he decided we would take a chance and play a 10-man defensive line against them.”

The underdog Golden Eagles managed a 6-6 tie.

“Coach Harbaugh could be funny one minute and really intense the next. And he kept you on your toes. I was a four-year starter for him and never once felt secure that I would be in the lineup from one week to the next.  He made us work for it “

In baseball, Mong was among the premier players in the demanding Southwest Buckeye League. He became a basketball starter in his junior year and somewhere still pressed into an old scrapbook is a red second-place ribbon he earned as a sprinter in a 220-yard dash.

Though he reduced his athletic activities to football and baseball while majoring in English at Haverford (attending on an academic scholarship given by Scott Paper Company), it was the latter in which he excelled. An infielder, his .357 career batting average still ranks 10^th today on the Haverford’s  all-time career batting average list.

And, he was clearly a leader, named captain in football in his junior and senior seasons and in baseball as a senior.

In retrospect, it was that melding of athletics and academics he most fondly looks back on. The competitions, the camaraderie, the rivalries, the campus enthusiasm, all blended into his learning experience. “That,” he says, “is what we want to provide here at UNT Dallas.”

Athletics, he says, is a place where one learns valuable lessons in dedication, sacrifice, teamwork – and humility. In his day, among the opposition faced were young players like a rival shortstop named Mike Schmidt ,who went on to a lengthy major league career, and Mike Pratt, who later played basketball for the legendary Adolph Rupp at the University of Kentucky. And there were others with that rare talent owned by few. “In athletics,” Mong reflects, “you quickly learn to accept and deal with your own limitations and make the most of the talent you have.”

Today, his competitive spirit remains. He’s run the White Rock Marathon, puts in an average of 15 miles of roadwork weekly and lifts weights. Last fall, he was present at Trailblazers home basketball games, cheering his first-year team on.

“I love the atmosphere, the enthusiasm, the drive of the players and our coaches,” he says.

He gets it.

The post A Game Winner appeared first on Texas Sports.

Earlier this year, the University of North Texas at Dallas was accepted to be the newest member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). UNT Dallas will begin competition for the first time this fall and the Trailblazers will compete in men’s and women’s basketball, track and cross country.

After the University received outstanding support from students to have an athletics fee of $7 per credit hour (lowest fee in the state), which will help finance their sports. Students voted with a 63 percent approval rate for this fee, in order to complete the university’s scope, and enhance the alumni and student experience.

To learn more about UNT Dallas’ new sports program, we spoke with Sports Information Director Carlton Stowers.

Q: Which conference will UNT be participating in this fall?

A: Sooner Athletic Conference. UNT Dallas was just granted membership a few weeks ago.

Q: Why these sports?

A: To start off it will be easier to limit our sports, on the drawing board we have ideas to bring in other sports like Soccer, right now all sports will be played off campus, but soon the University will be building a facility that can hold their sporting events.

Q: Who will be coaching these sports?

A: We have some very high profile Coaches. For Men’s Basketball we have Josh Howard, a former All-Pro Player for the Dallas Mavericks. Rodney Belcher is the Women’s Basketball Coach, he is known for recently leading the Plano High School’s girls basketball team to the State Championship – the Dallas Morning News named him “Coach of the Year.” The Cross Country and Track Coach is also a product of the Dallas Independent School District, Kenna Royal.

Q: With the current outbreak of Covid-19, will there be a lot of changes with scheduling and current plans?

A: Everyone is in the process of looking over all of what the NAIA has put forward as far as testing and guidelines. It is a very complicated and extensive process with a lot of things that need to be considered, but as of now you must plan as if everything is going how you would want it to go. We have been busy with recruiting, and it is a day to day process right now. There is an awful lot of consideration that needs to be addressed, fortunately for us we are looking at starting a season in the winter and not fall.

Q: Being a new program, and with Covid-19, have you guys faced any difficulty with recruiting new players?

A: The big bonuses we have with recruiting is the background of the coaches who are doing the recruiting. Josh Howard has been successful due to his background as an accomplished athlete. You know that Coach Belcher knows what he is doing since he has a state championship under his belt. My impression is that they have been very warmly received by the kids.

It has been a very hard recruiting season for all schools, since it has to be done online through zoom, and other technology as opposed to in-person tryouts and conversations. They seem real positive about what they have been able to accomplish thus far. I think our track and cross country coach has wrapped up his recruiting, so if all goes well he will be getting his team ready by the time school starts. 

Nothing brings a university family together quite like getting to root for the home team. Now the city of Dallas can finally embrace a public hometown college team. The UNT Dallas Trailblazers have finally filled that void and now aim to make their city proud. Go Trailblazers!

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