On Oct. 22, the College of Saint Benedict will celebrate 50 years of Title IX by honoring 50 of our greatest and most influential student-athletes in a ceremony at 7 p.m. in the Benedicta Arts Center (BAC) on campus. The event is free and open to the public. Please join us!
Leading up to the event, we will spotlight just a few of the major events that helped form the foundation of the long and successful Bennie athletic tradition we know today.
SAINT JOSEPH, Minn. -- Momentum had been steadily building across a number of different sports since the College of Saint Benedict was officially admitted as a member of the MIAC in 1985.
But it was the fall of 1990 when the school truly served notice it had arrived as a national athletic power.
That season, not one, but two CSB teams advanced to the NCAA Division III final four in their respective sports.
The soccer team – in just its seventh year of intercollegiate competition – compiled a record of 15-5-1 and advanced all the way to the national semifinals before falling 3-1 to Cortland (New York) State. The volleyball team, meanwhile, won its third MIAC title in four years and defeated archrival St. Thomas 3-1 in the Central Region championship.
With that victory, CSB advanced to the final four hosted by Washington University in St. Louis. The team fell 3-0 to eventual national champion UC-San Diego in the national semifinals, but rebounded to beat Juniata (Pennsylvania) 3-0 for third place – finishing with a record of 31-4 overall.
"There was just an incredible energy on campus that fall," recalls Colleen Neary, that season's MIAC women's soccer player of the year. "The volleyball team was packing Claire Lynch Hall and we had big crowds for maybe the first time ever out at the soccer field.
"We'd play our games, then hustle over to watch them. Each team fed off the other and the support on campus was incredible."
Neary and her teammates knocked off MIAC champion St. Mary's in the first round of regional play, then beat fellow conference foe Macalester 1-0 in the championship game played in two inches of snow. Sophomore Laurie Westman scored that game's only goal.
From there, it was on to New York where CSB and Cortland State were tied 1-1 with 15 minutes to play before the Red Dragons added two late goals. This time it was sophomore Laura Snyder who scored CSB's only goal.
"I remember it was freezing cold and the field was really muddy," Neary said. "It was just a huge mess. We may not have been quite ready for the moment. It was the first time we'd advanced that far.
"But it was a big deal just to be there."
It was the same for the volleyball team, which avenged a regular-season loss to the Tommies with the victory in the region final.
"Our theme for that season was 'We Decide,'" said then-head coach Carol Howe-Veenstra, who was also the school's longtime athletic director. "We talked a lot about making our own decisions when it came to our team's character and effort. Other people didn't get to make those decisions for us. We did."
The team was led by Amy Hagen, a three-time All-American who had 11 kills in the loss to UC-San Diego in the semifinals. She again led the way against Juniata in the third-place match with 15 kills and two ace serves.
"Amy was our only senior that year," said Howe-Veenstra, the program's head coach from 1985-99. "We were still a really young team. But what a phenomenal senior she was. She did so many things for us."
Howe-Veenstra said the success the volleyball and soccer teams achieved that season helped expand the athletic program's already-growing foothold – both on campus and beyond.
"Suddenly people on campus were talking about us, wishing us good luck and coming to our games," she said. "In the past at Saint Ben's, it had been about theater performances and other activities. It hadn't been as much about the Blazers (the school's then-athletic nickname). So to see that shift start to happen was really beautiful.
"It was a special time. Volleyball was winning. Soccer was winning. There was a real buzz about our athletic programs."
