Many congratulations to the Lady Commodores of Vanderbilt on their 4-3 defeat of Maryland East Shore in the finals of the NCAA women’s bowling championship. Their victims on the last weekend included 2006 champion Fairleigh Dickinson, and 2-time champion Nebraska. Two of their players, Josie Earnest and Kaitlin Reynolds, joined Kristin Kerr of Fairleigh Dickinson, and Marion Singleton and Jessica Worsley of Maryland East Shore on the all tournament team.
Bowling is a sport for which there are no specific graduation rates available, so only the rate for Women’s sports ‘Other’ than Basketball and Cross-Country/Track can be listed for the participating teams. Vanderbilt comes in second at 81%, behind only Sacred Heart at 86%. Central Missouri, Maryland East Shore, Minnesota State-Mankato, and Nebraska are all respectable at 65%, 67%, 68%, and 68% respectively. Fairleigh Dickinson’s 47% graduation rate does, however, come as a bit of a shock.
Special props must, however, go to the Lady Gothic Knights of New Jersey City University which, despite being a non-scholarship Division III school (and thus not mandated to report graduation data), advanced to the finals for the fourth year running and were eliminated in the second round by Sacred Heart on a 4-3 score.
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Thanks for the kind words! For a school like VU that's never won an NCAA championship in anything (despite a theoretical football championship or two before the AP polls), this is a big deal!
And I agree, it's noteworthy that NJCU has that success at the D-I level with an otherwise D-III athletic program.
Oh yeah, I'd be remiss to not point out that they're the Commodores. I believe Rutgers' teams are all known as the Scarlet Knights.
Have you noticed that the HBU's have decide to try to be competative in women's bowling. The runner up last year was Alabama A&M.
The final eight schools did not list many schools that could be seen as sports powerhouses.
Thanks for stopping in SD. You make an interesting obervation - one which I had not noticed.
I am going to be blogging every championship in every sport. The principle reason for this is so I can get my head around the question cognate to your point - to what extent does success in the revenue sports ends up translating to success in other sports?
to what extent does success in the revenue sports ends up translating to success in other sports?
Very good question. Some of us VU fans have talked about the converse: Does sucess in the non-revs lead to success in the "ones that matter"?
From what I've heard of Chancellor Gordon Gee and effective AD David Williams, they certainly seem to think so. They've cited Stanford as an example of a school that's dominated the non-revs and baseball but also done very well in MBB and football.
I'm not as "utilitarian" as many of my fellow fans -- in other words, I'm proud of our bowlers regardless of whether their success propels our football team to work harder -- but it's still a question I care deeply about.
I believe that success in the revenue sports leads to success in the non-revenue sports.
I looked at the standings in some non-revenue sports lookings for top 25 programs at schools with no or bad men’s football/basketball programs.
In women’s volleyball that would include Cal Poly, San Diego, New Mexico St.
In field hockey that would include Old Dominion, Richmond, James Madison, BU, and American.
In women’s lacrosse, that would include Northwestern, James Madison, Penn, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Denver, and Delaware.
In softball, it would include Baylor, Northwestern, Illinois State, Southern Illinois and Louisiana-Lafayette.
Women’s soccer would include Portland, Santa Clara, William & Mary, and Milwaukee-Wisconsin.
Women’s golf would include Pepperdine and Denver.
Just looking at top womens programs I would say the two best indicators of success in women's sports in success in men's sports and having a school that would naturally attract upper middle class white females who grew up in the suburbs.
Thanks for the thoughts SD. The softball schools (including my own Southern Illinois) do, however, represent a bit of an anomaly.
You should look at the rankings for women's bowling:
Fairleigh Dickinson,
Nebraska,
Vanderbilt,
New Jersey City,
Central Missouri State,
Maryland Eastern Shore,
Sacred Heart,
Arkansas State,
Alabama A&M,
Texas Southern,
Minnesota State,
Southern,
Wisconsin-Whitewater, Bethune-Cookman,
Morgan State,
Fayetteville State,
Adelphi
Ouf of 17 schools ranked, there were eight HBCU's. Other than for Nebraska and Vanderbilt, I doubt if you would find the schools on any other top ten lists.
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