Anderson Haigler

The Timeless Jenny Craig Pavilion

SAN DIEGO - It would be hard to pinpoint the exact moment when USD Athletics outgrew its old venue for basketball and volleyball, the Sports Center. Perhaps it was when fans began hopping fences to sneak in and catch a peek of a sold-out men’s basketball game. Not even Bill Walton could get a seat at gametime for the Toreros’ matchup against LMU in 1990 — the basketball legend tried, but was turned away. There simply wasn’t enough room. Or maybe it was when an official count of seats in the gy
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University of San Diego Athletics •

Bright Future an Understatement for Award-Winning Elena Elie

"I was working hard and I was pursuing goals, but I was also just hanging out with my friends," she recalls with a touch of nostalgia, now several weeks removed from graduation. "Sitting in the sun and playing in the water…like what's better than that?" To hear it from Elie, her last four years were challenging, but no more so than anybody else's at the small Catholic school on the hill. Classes came and went. She studied, worked hard, carved out time to have fun, and went about her business,
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"Sky's The Limit" for San Diego Baseball in 2023

As a chilly spring rain fell last June outside of Oregon State's Omaha Room, where College World Series trophies greet visitors before they perform their postgame media obligations at historic Goss Stadium, San Diego baseball head coach Brock Ungricht wasted no time in summarizing the impact of the Toreros' most successful season in more than a decade. "It was huge to show people what we're about….we're not going away, we're gonna be here," Ungricht said that evening after a whirlwind week that saw his team take down perennial power Vanderbilt at the oldest ballpark in college baseball. "I think it definitely puts the brand back on the map."
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A Volleyball Duo For The Ages

Thirty-one matches was enough for a lot of things to happen in 2018. It was enough for San Diego volleyball to notch 18 wins — three against ranked teams — and reach the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 in one of USD's most accomplished seasons to date. A timeframe substantial enough for then-freshmen Annie Benbow and Katie Lukes to combine for nearly 200 digs and 230 kills as they got their college careers underway in impressive fashion, setting parallel paths of success into motion. Nearly five years later, however, Benbow is quick to point out what didn't immediately crystallize during those 31 contests.
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Upcoming Season For Volleyball "As Real As It Gets"

As her players arrange themselves for the photo, Jennifer Petrie can't help but laugh. In full uniform, with the Pacific Ocean at their backs on a picture-perfect San Diego afternoon ahead of their annual beach photoshoot, her Torero volleyball team is jockeying for position atop a park bench overlooking Sunset Cliffs, and time is running out. Sophomore defensive specialist Anna Jaworowski has two minutes and counting to get a picture for the popular app "BeReal," which prompts users at random each day to take a picture of what they're doing to…well, be more real, and the veteran head coach has been entrusted to get one that has the entire team in it. As the clock winds down, Petrie snaps the photo, delighting her 18 scholar-athletes when her smiling face fills the selfie camera's section of the digital keepsake. These days, there's a lot to smile about for San Diego volleyball.
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Steve Lavin Ready to Lead Toreros Forward

SAN DIEGO — Moments before he spoke for nearly a hour straight, Steve Lavin paused. Before he detailed his upbringing with a pair of teachers for parents, before he discussed the eight NCAA Tournaments, the five Sweet 16 appearances, the Elite Eight, before he described a unique decade spent on the other side of the court as a broadcaster, the 57-year-old took a deep breath to compose himself. "I want to begin with gratitude," Lavin said on Friday afternoon before a packed crowd in USD's KIPJ Theatre. "Bec
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A Dream Come True for Ungricht, A New Era for the Toreros

The conversation slows as the final topic is considered, then the group decides that a profile of the team's new head coach is in order. Ungricht pauses for perhaps the first time all morning as the topic is broached, then speaks quietly, a different, more serious tone than the one he took in the first hour and a half of the meeting. "The story shouldn't just be about me," he politely suggests as he motions toward the rest of the suite and the field below, where his players are getting loose
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Steady As Ever, Jefferis Ready to Make a Splash in Junior Season

SAN DIEGO — Walk by Fowler Park at any given hour when there's not a game or a practice, and you'll likely hear it. It comes from the first-base side of the field, just past the visitor's dugout, and it doesn't matter whether it's day, night, or something in between — odds are, you'll hear it. "Fowler Park works," he texts the night before to confirm the meeting's location before adding a helpful hint. "I'll probably be hitting." "That guy will show up, he's not going to say a word, but
University of San Diego Athletics •

"If You Don't Grind, You Don't Shine" — Looking Back at USD's 12 PFL Titles

Last Saturday, that hard work and resilience culminated in a historic achievement as San Diego captured its 12th PFL Championship to tie Dayton for the most titles in conference history. Against all odds, USD grinded, and now it — along with the PFL championship trophy — shines, a feat that serves both as a testament to the Toreros' resilience and a reminder. A reminder that even amidst the most challenging of circumstances, the road to the Pioneer Football League championship runs through S
University of San Diego Athletics •

Unfinished Business

Good news like this was too sweet to get through the grapevine. "It was kind of funny, actually," Bird recalled. "We had known, and all of our teammates had pretty much known that we were gonna come back. In our post-season meeting with Coach Fisher, she was like, 'So what are your plans for next year? Are you gonna come back?'" Several months later, there's an ease in Bird's voice as she describes the moment and relays how the group answered their coach's query with a question of their
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Toreros Together

As all ten players reached the suburban summit, Scholl snapped a picture before his team embraced him, the workout and a summer full of preparation concluded. Fall practices and an important 2021-2022 season awaited USD, but for the time being the third-year coach was satisfied. In a quiet moment minutes later, mere months removed from a season in which circumstances out of his and his players' control forced the team apart, he tweeted the photo along with a simple dispatch. "Finishing an Ou
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Expectations, Excitement High for Golf

"It was exhilarating, our team exploded and got all excited," said Riley, who has plenty of golf moments to compare it to after competing in 330 PGA Tour events and playing in the 2004 Ryder Cup for Team USA. "Overall it was a tremendous season…really a great accomplishment for the program." Xu's clutch putt punctuated what shaped up to be a resurgent, impressive campaign for San Diego, one that saw them persist through COVID-19 challenges to put together one of the most successful seasons i
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The Road to Redemption

offers the statement without hesitation, without any pretense of sugarcoating what the last year has held for San Diego football."I don't think we played very well," Kamaka says following a midweek practice when asked to describe the Toreros' tumultuous, shortened Spring 2021 campaign. "There were a lot of things going on…but it's not an excuse for how we played."A few days later, head coachis even more direct in his assessment."I think it was awful," Lindsey quipped in a recent phone interview.
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Toreros Ready to Return

Normalcy returned in bits and pieces for San Diego women's soccer, marked by the type of events and milestones that scholar-athletes cherish.The reappearance of the beloved "Gear Day," for example, when Toreros receive a heap of team swag and uniforms in the spring. Being able to once again hold the player-led, sans-coaches "Captain's Camp" in July, preparing USD for their rigorous late-summer official practices and eventual set of games. And once the fall roster was assembled, the first in-pers
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Tight-Knit Toreros Ready to Take On 2021

You won't find it sifting through last year's box scores, won't be able to see it as you scroll though the schedule tabbed "2020 (Spring 2021)" on San Diego men's soccer's website, one that chronicles a season that was as unconventional as it was a testament to the Toreros' resilience. But it was there — is there — senioremphasizes."One big thing we got from (last season) was new camaraderie and friendships within the team," the 2021 All-WCC Preseason Team selection and team captain described. "
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We Are San Diego: Volleyball Ready to Run It Back

Like most things in life, conceptualizing the last year and a half for San Diego women's volleyball takes a healthy dose of perspective. View the span from one angle, one that considers the team's dominant run through West Coast Conference play and postseason success, and it might seem as if it's been business as usual in Alcala Park for the Toreros."I think at the time, looking back on it now we were just so grateful to be competing and playing at all that it didn't matter what the length (of t
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The Streak

SAN DIEGO—Five years, five months, and 24 days. Players' entire careers, students' entire college experiences. Renovations to Torero Stadium. A pause due to a global pandemic, then a resilient return to the gridiron in an unconventional spring season. As the winds of change swept across Alcala Park over the last half decade, perhaps only one thing held constant on the sun-soaked plateau that University of San Diego Athletics calls home: USD football's Pioneer Football League win streak. The team rattled off 39 PFL victories in a row, to be exact, holding strong week in and week out as the rest of the conference tried to topple the Toreros and their historic run. Not bad for a school that at one point lost its football program due to a lack of interest.
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Wanting It More Than They Fear It

The message rings out clearly through the USD Softball Complex, even ifhas to shout to be heard through her face mask."Want it," the first-year head coach implores her team, "more than you fear it."What "it" will ultimately be for San Diego softball remains to be seen. But with an esteemed and energetic leader at the helm, 12 new players, and a talented contingent of returners, hope is springing eternal on the Northeast point of Alcala Park. And the team certainly isn't lacking for "want," or mo
University of San Diego Athletics •

At Last, Volleyball Season Arrives

How do you prepare for a season that has no start date? How do you stay motivated, let alone focused in the face of a five-month delay?, usually businesslike when it comes to talking volleyball, laughs as she considers the unusual nature of the situation; months on the calendar flipping by without any semblance of certainty for her program. Her contemplation registers even through an iPhone speaker during a recent phone interview."That has been a very challenging aspect to this, trying to naviga
University of San Diego Athletics •

Tuning Out the Noise

SAN DIEGO—Spend enough time in the Jenny Craig Pavilion when it's empty — before a practice, or perhaps late at night after a game — and you'll notice some things. The low hum of the lights when there's no cheering fans there to drown it out. How the sound of a dribbled basketball echoes throughout the venue as 5,100 empty seats look on. You'll notice more than anything else, of course, that it's much quieter than you're used to it being, as nearly all college basketball facilities will be this
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