Mark Brew is 3-for-3 as a head coach in taking Lee University baseball teams to the NAIA World Series in Lewiston, Idaho. And since his Flames finished second to perennial host and usual champion Lewis-Clark State last spring, the Lee athletic department has done very well indeed.
Eleven of the Cleveland school’s 13 varsity programs earned representation in 2009-10 NAIA national events, and the other two, softball and women’s tennis, just missed at-large berths and wound up 16th and 17th in the rankings. The softball team was 39-14.
— The women’s soccer team finished 24-1-1 and earned Lee’s first NAIA national championship.
— The Lee men’s soccer and volleyball teams reached national first rounds.
— The cross country teams had three men and two women in the national meets, and that wasn’t even the runners’ most remarkable accomplishment. More on that later.
— The Lee women’s basketball team reached the NAIA quarterfinals for the first time and wound up 30-6, while the men’s team was 26-8 and also went to the national tournament.
— Then came the spring, when the men’s tennis team won by shutout in the first round of the nationals and was No. 14 in the final rankings, and Brew’s squad hosted and won a five-team opening-round series in the new NAIA format. The Flames, who won super regionals the last two years to get to Lewiston, are 50-12 after their 22-4 victory Thursday night.
— Lee is going again as a team to the NAIA men’s golf national tournament this week, and the first-year women’s golf program had two players tie for sixth and likely earn All-American status Friday in South Dakota. One of those was Julie Donnestad, who was a captain of the soccer team that won the NAIA championship. She headed the Norway soccer contingent that helped fill out John Maupin’s first Lady Flames golf squad.
“I had never dreamed about this,” the 5-foot-3 Donnestad said Friday night. “Getting to play in the national championship was way over what I expected when I started with the golf team this winter. It’s been an incredible year.”
She said she welcomed golf for something to do after her senior soccer season. Clearly, though, she couldn’t let it be just a pleasant pastime.
She was the female recipient of Lee’s Paul Conn Student Athlete of the Year Award, named for the school president, and Maupin said she exhibited the same drive and cerebral prowess in golf that soccer coach Matt Yelton praised in her.
“I have never seen someone work as hard in one semester as she did,” Maupin said. “Her work ethic and her mental game are second to none. She has a great short game, and she knows how to think her way around a course. I would like to see what could happen after a whole year.”
Donnestad’s father is a teaching pro and her mother is an officer in Norway’s women’s golf association, according to Maupin, so Julie played a lot of golf until having to decide between it and soccer six years ago. She said she just didn’t have enough time to get her golf game as consistently strong as she thinks it can be, so she “can’t really be upset” that she didn’t do even better in the national tournament.
She and fellow all-tournament player Rachel Ingram are one-year wonders for the fledgling Lady Flames, but Maupin has six women coming for 2009-10, and he has followed retiree Jack Souther in getting the men’s team to the nationals.
“He’s been my biggest supporter, I think,” Maupin said, “and being a first-year coach, I’ve learned a lot being around all the coaches here. I’ve been super impressed with everything I’ve seen here.”
The all-around success, Brew said, “is a direct reflection of the administration support, from Dr. Conn on down to Larry Carpenter, our athletic director. This is a great place for coaches to work — a great place in terms of resources and facilities.”
And athletes. Consider this: In the Country Music Half Marathon on April 25 in Nashville, four cross country Flames finished in the top 12 out of 22,920 finishers. Newly signed Kenyan Johnson Njoroge was the race runner-up, and freshman Mike Walker from Red Bank was seventh. Junior Caleb Morgan from Walker Valley was 11th in the 13.1-mile event, and freshman Nathan Bennett from Acworth, Ga., was right behind him.
College men usually run eight kilometers, a shade under five miles. Apparently that’s well short of the Flames’ best distances. Coach Don Jayroe will have them working on their short games, too.