Dear Friends of Tribe Athletics,

Greetings from the West Coast! Thank goodness I still have my packing chops as this has been a coast-to-coast week for me. It started Tuesday at the CAA annual meeting in Ponte Vedra, Florida, and then I hopped on a plane to California for an event I've been looking forward to for months!

Right now, I'm happy to be in San Francisco, one of my favorite cities and the home base for this year's W&M Weekend. Tonight, we are going All In at Oracle Park, the home of Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants, for the kick-off event. Athletics is sponsoring the get-together and at the risk of making those of you who aren't going very jealous, we have a spectacular agenda. Two outstanding alums, Kathy Carter '91, chief executive officer of LA28, the summer 2028 Olympic and Paralympic games in Los Angeles, and Jill Ellis '88, L.H.D. '16, president of San Diego Wave FC and a two-time world champion as the head coach of the U.S. Women's National Team, who was just inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame, are our featured guests.
 

Just prior to boarding our cross-county flight some amazing news came in on the academic front, as our student-athletes achieved a sterling 3.43 G.P.A. for the spring semester and ended the year with an equally impressive 3.38 cumulative GPA! This was the first semester in our records we had ALL teams earning at least a 3.0!!  Truly remarkable work by our coaches, academic staff and, of course, student-athletes.  Our pride in this Tribe has never been stronger!

Other members of the Tribe have been on the go, too.  Last week, three of our student-athletes attended the 2023 Black Student-Athlete Summit in Los Angeles on the USC Campus. Jasmine Perkins, the newly appointed assistant AD for student-athlete development, accompanied Kayla Beckwith of women's basketball, Quinn Osborne of football and Jaylin Locke of women's lacrosse as the Tribe's first representatives to this important event.
 

Our offensive coordinator, Christian Taylor and three additional members of our football coaching staff just made the trek to Buffalo at the invitation of head coach Sean McDermott '97. They had a chance to tour the Bills' facility and talk shop with some of the best offensive and defensive minds in the NFL. By the way, our football season tickets are on sale and now's a great time to purchase yours.
 

While we've officially concluded spring semester '23, we still have some terrific honors to share about our student-athletes:

•  Senior third baseman Ben Williamson was named the CAA Player of the Year after ending the regular season with a league-leading .399 batting average that included 11 doubles, five triples and 12 home runs.
 
•  Three Tribe student-athletes received College Sports Communicators Academic All-District honors—golfers Sarah Houle and Matthew Feinstein, and Caroline Donovan of lacrosse.

It's almost time to leave for the ballpark where I will be rubbing shoulders with members of the Tribe from the west coast, while I renew old friendships and make new ones, which makes for a great night ahead!

Go Tribe!