Baseball Wraps Up Share Of Commissioner’s Cup
UTSA will end its one-year stay in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) with at least a share of the Commissioner’s Cup. Baseball reeled off its sixth consecutive WAC victory last Saturday at Louisiana Tech and completed a rapid late-season rise to a fourth-place finish in the league’s regular season standings. The race to crown the league’s best all-around sports program finally will be decided this week at the postseason tournament at QuikTrip Park in Grand Prairie.

Commissioner's Cup points are awarded in order of finish, equal to the number of teams that participate in each sport, and are averaged between a team’s regular season finish and its WAC Championship finish. With 18 sports finished and only the baseball tournament left to play, UTSA temporarily sits in third place with 81.5 points. Idaho is in first with 86.5 and Utah State is in second with 82. Neither Idaho nor Utah State plays baseball. With seven points from the baseball regular season finish and at least three points assured from the tournament, UTSA will average at least five points, which will be enough to tie Idaho for the top spot in this year's race.

Compounding the Commissioner’s Cup calculations is the pool-play format at the WAC Tournament.

No. 4 seed UTSA improved to 32-23 this season with a 3-2, 14-inning victory against fifth-seeded Sacramento State in the tournament's opening game on Wednesday. The Roadrunners will play again at 3 p.m. on Thursday against No. 8 seed San Jose State (17-38) and at 7 p.m. the following night against WAC Regular Season Co-Champion CSU Bakersfield (35-21).

The winner of Pool A will play the winner of Pool B, which consists of No. 2 seed UT Arlington (30-25), third-seeded Texas State (27-28), No. 6 New Mexico State (28-26) and seventh-seeded Dallas Baptist (28-28). The championship game between the two pool-play winners will be played at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

Tickets Remain For Coker Road Trip Reception
Tickets remain for Thursday night’s Austin-area Roadrunners Road Trip reception with UTSA head football coach Larry Coker. One lucky UTSA fan will join Coker on the field when he throws out the first pitch for the Round Rock Express/Reno Aces Triple-A Pacific Coast League baseball game at Dell Diamond. A special $20 UTSA reserved seat ticket to the game includes food and drinks at the Coker reception beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the United Heritage Center at Dell Diamond.  

The reception ends a two-day Roadrunners Road Trip through the Austin area. Coker will speak to Leadership Round Rock graduates at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the Round Rock Marriott North. He begins Thursday by receiving proclamations on the floors of both the Texas House of Representatives and Senate. He then will conduct several media interviews in Austin prior to hosting UTSA fans at Dell Diamond. Athletics Director Lynn Hickey will speak to the Round Rock Rotary Club at noon on Thursday at the First United Methodist Church.

Click here to purchase tickets to the reception and Express game. Enter “UTSA” in the Special Offer Code space and then clink the Reserved Seat option. There are two options in the reserved seat tab and UTSA fans will need to choose the $20 “UTSA Reserved” option. Tickets can be printed when ordered or will be available at will call. The $20 reserved seat ticket includes food and drinks at the presume reception in the United Heritage Center at the Dell Diamond. UTSA fans will receive a wristband outside the Heritage Center providing access to the party suite beginning at 5:30 p.m.

USA Today Speaks Nicely About Roadrunners
USA Today recently began its annual countdown of all 125 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams and reporter Paul Myerberg ranked the Roadrunners 119th. Despite the low ranking, Myerberg pays the following compliments to Coker and UTSA …

“Coker’s imprint is all over this program: he’s the face of UTSA football, its ambassador since day one, and the prime architect of the university’s rapid on-field climb from groundbreaking to the FBS level.

“What’s to like? A leader like (UTSA senior quarterback Eric) Soza is irreplaceable; Soza is someone to like immensely. He’s a team captain, a team leader and one of the premier student-athletes in college football, as evidenced by his status as one of the five finalists for the NCAA’s John Wooden Citizenship Award — and I imagine Soza is as proud of the latter designation as anything he’s done on the football field.

“It’s easy to fall in love with how (UTSA) played a season ago, winning eight games against an FBS-heavy schedule, and it’s even easier to fall in love with the program’s potential. The Roadrunners played their first game in 2011; two years later, the program is a full-blooded member of Conference USA, one of the most secure non-AQ leagues in college football. At this rate, UTSA will be the SEC’s newest member by 2018.”

Click here to read the entire USA Today rundown on the Roadrunners.

Sign Up For UTSA Summer Camps
Summer means UTSA Athletics camps for boys and girls of all ages and skill levels. Altogether, UTSA Athletics offers more than 40 summer camp programs in baseball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, football, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball. Most camps will be held on the UTSA Main Campus in the same facilities used by Roadrunners varsity teams. Click here for more information and to identify the appropriate camp information for your youngster. If you have questions, please contact the coaches listed under each sport for additional camp information.

Father’s Day Special Offer
Here’s a convenient and inexpensive gift idea for your Father’s Day shopping list. Purchase new UTSA Football season tickets, additional tickets if you’re already a season ticket holder and/or refer a season ticket purchaser to the ticket office by June 14 and receive a UTSA T-shirt for dad. UTSA Football season tickets start as low as $60. Orders must be received by May 31 to receive T-shirts by Father’s Day on June 16. Please call the UTSA Ticket Office at (210) 458-UTSA (8872) if you have questions about this special offer.

Final Thoughts
UTSA’s one-year stay in the WAC is almost over and entry into Conference USA (C-USA) is rapidly approaching. Amazingly, we wait for the baseball tournament to determine if UTSA will win the WAC Commissioner’s Cup in our inaugural season in an FBS conference. At the same time, our staff is coordinating our July 1 entry into C-USA.

I spent much of last week at the C-USA spring meetings in Destin, Fla. No one could have imagined just two years ago that we would be with this collection of universities studying presentations from television and bowl partners.

Whether we win the WAC Commissioner’s Cup outright or finish in a tie with Idaho, it has been a tremendous year for the Roadrunners. The WAC awards its Commissioner’s Cup to the school that performs the best in each of the conference’s 19 men’s and women’s championships. Winning all or part of this year’s Cup took a team effort.

Men’s indoor track & field won our only WAC Championship so far, but I am so proud of all 17 of our programs. We asked them to take a huge step forward into another level of competition and we more than held our own. We excelled.

Any athletics achievement is the result of collective individual efforts. As we prepare to close the book on the WAC and open another in C-USA, two individual student-athlete efforts this year stand out in my mind.

Paige Hamilton and John Bormann are walk-ons. That means they receive no scholarship assistance. Paige walked on this year in volleyball and softball and became a starter in both. John walked on in baseball and became one of the WAC’s best defensive catchers and a clutch hitter for the Roadrunners.

As we ask our fans to "believe” in the Roadrunners and invest in our C-USA future, these youngsters believed in their abilities, seized an opportunity and propelled themselves to new heights.

Please visit goUTSA.com this weekend to monitor the progress of our track & field student-athletes at the NCAA Championships Preliminary Rounds in Austin and follow the Roadrunners baseball team in the WAC Tournament in Grand Prairie. And please keep in your thoughts and prayers those in Oklahoma and Texas who lost their homes and loved ones in tornadoes during the past week.

Go Runners!

Sincerely,

Lynn Hickey
Director of Athletics