Connor Lanical Named Elite 90 Winner for DIII Men’s Outdoor Track & Field
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WAVERLY, Iowa- Connor Lancial is named the Elite 90 Winner for DIII Men’s Outdoor Track & Field. Lancial has become the fourth winner in school history and the third winner from track & field. The NCAA ELITE 90 award honors the exceptional achievements of student-athletes. This prestigious accolade is given to those […]
WAVERLY, Iowa- Connor Lancial is named the Elite 90 Winner for DIII Men’s Outdoor Track & Field. Lancial has become the fourth winner in school history and the third winner from track & field.
The NCAA ELITE 90 award honors the exceptional achievements of student-athletes. This prestigious accolade is given to those who have not only excelled at a national championship level in their sport but have also achieved the highest academic standards among their peers. The Elite 90 is proudly awarded to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 90 championships.
Lancial is set to compete in the 3000m steeplechase at the 2025 National Men’s Outdoor Track and Field Championships. The Championships will take place on May 22 (Thu) – May 24 (Sat) at the SPIRE Institute’s Outdoor Track & Field facility in Geneva, Ohio.
Fairmont Senior track and field athletes showcase skills on national stage | High School Sports
FAIRMONT — The season may have just wrapped at the end of the school year, but track and field athletes at Fairmont Senior High are still putting in work to prepare for next season. Last weekend, several Polar Bear runners competed in various events across the country, including the 2025 Adidas Track Nationals in Greensboro, […]
FAIRMONT — The season may have just wrapped at the end of the school year, but track and field athletes at Fairmont Senior High are still putting in work to prepare for next season.
Last weekend, several Polar Bear runners competed in various events across the country, including the 2025 Adidas Track Nationals in Greensboro, North Carolina, the New Balance National Outdoor Track Meet in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Nike Outdoor Nationals in Eugene, Oregon.
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Sorry Football, Nebraska is Officially a Volleyball School
Fan fodder is fan fodder. Iowa has bad corn. Penn State was the bridesmaid of the old Big Ten East. Northwestern’s the best team in the Big Ten…academically. Rutgers is proof that expansion isn’t always a good thing. The list goes on, and most of the tongue-in-cheek insults lead to their fair share of chuckles […]
Iowa has bad corn. Penn State was the bridesmaid of the old Big Ten East. Northwestern’s the best team in the Big Ten…academically. Rutgers is proof that expansion isn’t always a good thing. The list goes on, and most of the tongue-in-cheek insults lead to their fair share of chuckles at tailgates ahead of every football game. However, the most common hit on Nebraska is more accurate than the football team might like.
It happened slowly, but consistently. 24 years ago, Nebraska took on Miami in the Rose Bowl for a chance at a fourth national championship in eight years and first since 1997. If you told those Husker fans in Pasadena that it would be the last time Nebraska would even sniff a national championship for the next quarter century, they would have laughed you right back to Lincoln. However, what’s happened since that championship game loss has been no laughing matter.
The very next season was a heck of a bandaid rip. After the championship loss to end Nebraska’s 11-2 season, Nebraska followed that up with a 7-7 campaign. The stark contrast was a jolt, but anybody clad in red figured it was likely a one-off and the team would be “back” the next season.
The 2003 season resumed the confident swagger with a 10-3 mark and a 17-3 Alamo Bowl win over Michigan State. Then came the unthinkable in 2004 – a 5-6 season and the first missed bowl game in 35 years, snapping the longest consecutive bowl game appearance streak in the nation. What followed next has been 20 years is hard to look at, but here we go.
YEAR
RECORD
2005
8-4
2006
9-5
2007
5-7
2008
9-4
2009
10-4
2010
10-4
2011
9-4
2012
10-4
2013
9-4
2014
9-4
2015
6-7
2016
9-4
2017
4-8
2018
4-8
2019
5-7
2020
3-5
2021
3-9
2022
4-8
2023
5-7
2024
7-6
Can anyone spot the Pelini years? Me too…me too.
From 2014-2024, Nebraska football went 59-73. Those 73 losses in the past decade sting for a fan base that saw Nebraska lose only 76 games from 1968-2001. Last season, Nebraska sported its first winning record since 2016, when dabbing was still cool (sort of), we were on the iPhone 7 and #FreeHarambe was trending globally. It’s been a minute.
dark. Next. Welcome to the Groin Kick Chronicles: A Mathematical Ranking of Nebraska’s 70 Losses In The Groin Kick Era. Welcome to the Groin Kick Chronicles
In total since 2005, Nebraska football went 138-113. Nearly two full decades of .500 football with the “good years” being front-loaded on that stretch. So, what did the volleyball team decide to do during what many would say is the downfall of the Husker football program?
The Nebraska volleyball team celebrates a point. / Amarillo Mullen
For starters, the volleyball team appeared in the national championship match in 2005, 2006, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2023. In those seven appearances, the Big Red won three titles (2006, 2017 and 2015). This means they either ended the season as the best or second-best volleyball team in the country 35% of the past two decades – not bad.
The records on the non-championship appearance years weren’t exactly horrific either. Since 2005 (remember, NU football went 138-113), Nebraska volleyball’s combined record is 568-92. If Nebraska volleyball having fewer losses over the last 20 years isn’t bad enough, the win percentages shake out to .549% for football and .860% for volleyball. It’s not close.
However, it’s one thing to have success in what still to this day is viewed as a vastly less popular sport than the powerhouse that is college football in America. It’s completely another to go toe-to-toe with revenue and ultimately national attention with what used to be the most dominant football brand in the country back in the 1990s. That’s where things get even more interesting.
The Huskers celebrated the 400th consecutive sellout at Memorial Stadium. / Amarillo Mullen
We all know Nebraska leads all of college football with 403 consecutive sellouts and counting. What might not be as well known is that the volleyball team is catching up. They also hold the longest sellout streak in their respective sport with 306 consecutive sellouts. As if that record isn’t sacred enough for the volleyball team to eventually surpass, I bet you can guess who now holds the Memorial Stadium attendance record. Yep – the volleyball team.
“Volleyball Day in Nebraska” couldn’t have been more successful. The weather (in Nebraska no less!) was perfect, the stadium was packed to the brim with a record 92,003 fans and four different Nebraska volleyball teams took center stage. It was historic, took over the ESPN Sportscenter coverage that night and forwarded the entire sport of college volleyball in the national landscape – so much so, that we get to the ultimate turning point of why Nebraska really is a volleyball school.
Nebraska volleyball players celebrate a point at Maryland. / Nebraska Athletics
The Husker volleyball team is a traveling show, and the national television cameras are following them. I suppose that can happen when you win 86% of your matches over a 20-year stretch. In 2023, a boiling point statistic came out. The Nebraska football team was in the midst of a 5-7 season, their seventh-straight year of five wins or less. Meanwhile, the Nebraska volleyball team was en route to a 33-2 season that eventually ended with the heartbreaking loss to Texas in the national championship.
On October 21, 2023, the Nebraska football team beat Northwestern 17-9 in front of a national audience via the Big Ten Network. That same day in the same city with the same Big Ten Network cameras on them, the No. 2 Nebraska volleyball team hosted top-ranked Wisconsin and knocked off the Badgers in a five-set thriller, and that wasn’t the only upset of the night.
FINAL: Nebraska 17, Northwestern 9.
Matt Rhule admits it wasn’t a pretty game. But the #Huskers win coming off the bye week. Record improves to 4-3. pic.twitter.com/NV7Gd7KKeW
When the Big Ten Network ratings came out the following day, it was revealed that the Husker volleyball match drew 612,000 viewers across the country, while the Nebraska-Northwestern football game brought in around 560,000.
Could some of that be contributed to the seating capacity discrepancy of the Bob Devaney Sports Center and Memorial Stadium? Absolutely. Could you point to the fact that it was No. 1 vs. No. 2 in volleyball compared to two bottom-feeding teams of the Big Ten battling it out in football? Understandably so.
But for a sport that has perennially been under-represented nationally by the major networks and inherently the media that covers them, that day was a major shift. It’s a shift that eventually led to “Volleyball Day in Nebraska.” It’s a shift that has opened the door for far more than just Nebraska volleyball.
Just eight days after the volleyball team earned better TV ratings than their football counterparts, Fox picked up the Wisconsin-Minnesota match on October 29. It became the most watched volleyball match ever that night, averaging 1.66 million viewers.
Coach Dani Busboom-Kelly smiles after a rally on the court during Nebraska’s spring match against Kansas in Ord, Neb. / Amarillo Mullen
First serve of the 2025 Nebraska Volleyball season (Friday, August 22 vs. Pittsburgh in Lincoln) and kickoff of the Nebraska football season (Thursday, August 28 vs. Cincinnati in Kansas City) are officially less than two months away. Both of them have exciting starts to the season, and we already know at least the football game will be nationally televised on ESPN.
How the upcoming seasons go for both teams is anyone’s best guess (Lord knows we’ll make our fair share of predictions here at HuskerMax), but as we work our way into the fall, it’s okay to embrace the fact that Nebraska is a volleyball school. My HuskerMax colleague Dave Feit will back me up.
When people say Nebraska is a volleyball school, own it with pride. https://t.co/GoEO1k7I9D
Nebraska volleyball is a brand..a standard of excellence that transcends the sport. That used to be Nebraska football and can be again, but they’ll need to earn that spotlight, title and reputation back. They can start by heading over to “The Bob” for some pointers.
Nebraska Volleyball 2025 Schedule
Nebraska Football 2025 Schedule
Home games are bolded.
Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI, subscribing to HuskerMax on YouTube, and visiting HuskerMax.com daily.
University of Minnesota men’s basketball standout Dawson Garcia has signed with the Detroit Pistons and is scheduled to compete in the NBA 2K26 Summer League. Garcia, a forward from Savage, Minn., was a three-year standout for the Gophers. In 89 games for the Maroon and Gold, Garcia ranks 10th in career points (1,557) as a Gopher. […]
University of Minnesota men’s basketball standout Dawson Garcia has signed with the Detroit Pistons and is scheduled to compete in the NBA 2K26 Summer League.
Garcia, a forward from Savage, Minn., was a three-year standout for the Gophers. In 89 games for the Maroon and Gold, Garcia ranks 10th in career points (1,557) as a Gopher. He also ranked ninth in career scoring average (17.5), 12th in career field goals (546), seventh in free throws made (356) and 10th in free throw attempts (459). During all three of his Gopher seasons from 2022-25, Garcia led the team in points and rebounds, becoming the first Gopher to accomplish this feat since Randy Breuer from 1981-83. The Prior Lake High School product received six postseason All-Big Ten honors in three seasons as a Gopher. He was named a Second Team All-Big Ten selection in both his junior and senior seasons and honorable mention in 2022-23. Garcia was a two-time Preseason All-Big Ten, a multiple-time Basketball Hall of Fame finalist, and a Naismith Trophy Watchlist honoree in his Gopher tenure. He was also a two-time NABC All-District selection.
Garcia arguably saved his best season for his last. He led the team in scoring and conference action alone, averaging 19.2 points, which placed him fourth in the league. In 31 games played, Garcia had 26 double-digit games this past season, 17 20-point games and three 30-point performances. His 17 20-point games ranked as one of the best in the Big Ten. Of those 20-point games, 11 came against Big Ten opponents. In addition, Garcia scored 614 points in 2024-25, which ranked sixth in school history.
NBA 2K26 Summer League will be held in Las Vegas that features all 30 NBA teams and takes place July 10-20, 2025 at the Thomas & Mack Center and Pavilion on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Honor Roll: The News-Gazette’s Boys’ Track and Field Athletes of the Year | Sports
Sawyer Woodard of Tuscola joins the exclusive list this year. YEAR ATHLETE SCHOOL 2025 Sawyer Woodard Tuscola 2024 Josiah Hortin Tuscola 2023 Daniel Lacy Centennial 2022 Kemoni McCullough Centennial 2021 CJ Shoaf Mahomet-Seymour 2019 Hunter Hendershot Mahomet-Seymour 2018 Steven Migut Unity 2017 Nicholas Jackson Champaign Central 2016 Jon Davis Oakwood 2015 Jon Davis Oakwood 2014 […]
Oregon track & field legend Bill Dellinger dies at 91
What’s on the track at Hayward Field in 2025? Hayward Field will play host to a wide variety of track and field events in 2025. Bill Dellinger, one of the most influential figures in track and field, distance running and the University of Oregon’s history, died June 27 at the age of 91. Born in […]
Hayward Field will play host to a wide variety of track and field events in 2025.
Bill Dellinger, one of the most influential figures in track and field, distance running and the University of Oregon’s history, died June 27 at the age of 91.
Born in 1934 in Grants Pass but raised in Springfield, Dellinger attended UO and had a prolific running career.
At Springfield High, Dellinger won the first OSAA Boys Cross Country championship in 1949.
He was a three-time Olympian and competed in the 5,000 meters in the 1956, 1960 and 1964 games.
After he wrapped up his own running career, Dellinger worked as an assistant coach under Bill Bowerman at his alma mater until the latter’s retirement in 1973.
It was during that time Dellinger coached Oregon running legend Steve Prefontaine and developed a close relationship with the star distance runner.
Dellinger was promoted to head track and field coach at Oregon after Bowerman retired and served in that role until 1998, winning five NCAA championships.
“Coach Bill Dellinger was one of the greatest coaches ever,” Rudy Chapa, a six-time All-American at UO and member of the Ducks’ 1977 national title-winning cross country team, said in a GoDucks news release. “However, for those of us lucky enough to have been coached by him, what we treasured most was the genuine friendship he gave us long after our running days were over. He gave us so much more than guidance on the track; he gave us his heart.”
“Bill was deeply loved, and he will be profoundly missed by his athletes, the Eugene-Springfield community, and the entire world of track and field,” Chapa said.
Under Dellinger’s guidance, over nearly three decades as Oregon’s cross-country coach and 25 years as its track and field coach, his athletes broke 18 American records, won 12 NCAA titles and made 17 Olympic appearances.
Dellinger was the recipient of USA Track and Field’s Legend Coach Award in 2021 and was inducted in the USTFCCCA collegiate athlete Hall of Fame in 2024.
He is honored in the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, UO Athletics Hall of Fame, Track and Field Hall of Fame for Coaching, Distance Running Hall of Fame, Drake Relays Hall of Fame and Grants Pass Hall of Fame.
Oregon’s annual cross country meet, the Bill Dellinger Invitational, is named after the legendary coach.
Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on X @AlecDietz.
Late switch to rowing sends Henrik Neuspiel to Dartmouth College – OttawaSportsPages.ca
By Martin Cleary Henrik Neuspiel is a natural athlete. Pick a sport and he has likely given it a try and had success in his journey. Sport was a natural avenue to follow as his father Victor competed in three world championships in kayaking and his mother Margaret Nelson Neuspiel played for Canada’s women’s water […]
Pick a sport and he has likely given it a try and had success in his journey.
Sport was a natural avenue to follow as his father Victor competed in three world championships in kayaking and his mother Margaret Nelson Neuspiel played for Canada’s women’s water polo squad.
For the past dozen years, he has been recognized as a hockey player in the winter and a flatwater sprint kayaker in the summer. But he’s more than just a two-sport athlete.
During his three years of studying in the High Performance Athlete program at John McCrae Secondary School, he participated in varsity rugby and track and field. In his first two years of high school, he was the top novice (while attending Merivale High School) and junior shot put thrower at the National Capital Secondary School Athletic Association and Eastern Ontario levels. He competed at the 2023 OFSAA championships in boys’ junior shot put.
His performances in track and rugby earned him the school’s top athlete award in each sport in 2023.
As a Grade 9 student-athlete at Merivale, he was selected the junior athlete of the year for his overall efforts.
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Neuspiel also has been known to play on his high school basketball and volleyball teams and compete in cross-country running races in the fall and cross-country skiing events in the winter.
As for hockey, he climbed as high as a U16 AA-level defenceman and played Canada’s national winter sport for 12 years.
His summers were spent at the Rideau Canoe Club, starting in week-long, learn-to-paddle canoe programs before graduating to provincial, national and international championships, where he has won 54 medals, including 30 gold.
But during his last several hockey and kayaking seasons, the 6’5″ 18-year-old was trying to work a new sport into his repertoire – rowing.
For the past four years, he has attended the RBC Training Ground tryout sessions at the University of Ottawa. It’s an opportunity for young athletes to be tested in front of technical recruiters from a variety of Canadian sport governing bodies.
More than 2,000 athletes take part in this athletic showcase and the top 30 are declared RBC Olympians and awarded financial assistance packages with the goal of making a specific national team. While Neuspiel didn’t qualify for the top 30 each year, he attracted some interest from rowing.
Henrik Neuspiel at RBC Training Ground. Photo: @henrik_neuspiel Instagram
“I hadn’t grown out of kayaking. I love it. But rowing was a really good opportunity for me,” explained Neuspiel about switching sports late in his youth.
While rowing was now on his sports agenda, he didn’t act on it immediately. He wanted to savour the end of his junior kayaking career with some international flavour.
Neuspiel started to tinker with rowing last year by doing some ERG testing, where he was timed over 2,000 metres on a stationary rowing machine. His scores were eye popping and attention grabbing. His sports career is now devoted to rowing.
He has committed to attend Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire for the 2025-26 academic year and will race for The Big Green as a freshman.
Rowing Canada also has seen his potential as well as three other Ottawa Rowing Club teammates, who have been named to represent Canada at the Intercontinental Rowing Challenge on July 15-16 in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Neuspiel will be joined by Max Froeschl, Jack Coulson and Samaya Khosla.
“I have been in contact with Zak Lewis (Ottawa Rowing Club head coach) for quite a while, after he reached out to me three to four years ago,” Neuspiel said. “He accommodated me. I didn’t want to jump in it right away.”
Neuspiel signed off on his youth kayaking career in 2024 by competing for Canada at the World Junior Sprint Canoe Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and the Canoe Sprint Olympic Hopes Regatta in Szeged, Hungary.
At the Olympic Hopes, he won a silver medal in the K2 500-metre final. At the world juniors, he helped Canada to a sixth-place showing in the boys’ K4 500-metre final, which was the country’s best result in that discipline in 10 years.
Henrik Neuspiel competed for Canoe-Kayak Canada in 2024. Photo: henrikneuspiel.com
While Neuspiel hasn’t started serious racing as a rower, he has taken part in regular ERG ranking sessions. He is considered the top male junior on the Canadian ERG rankings and has a personal-best time of six minutes and seven seconds for 2,000 metres.
At six feet, five inches, Neuspiel has an ideal frame for rowing, is fit from his years of kayaking with a double-bladed paddle and has a powerful engine to cut through the water now with one or two oars.
Rowing also allowed him the valuable tool to chase a university education at an Ivy League school. Ivy League schools offer grant-in-aid rather than full or partial scholarships to its student-athletes and rowing is one of those eligible varsity sports. Kayaking or canoeing isn’t a varsity sport in Canada or the United States.
“I saw more opportunities in rowing. Once I tested (on the ERG), I liked it,” explained Neuspiel, an honours high school student with a high 80s average. “It was a no-brainer not to get into it.”
Neuspiel made the maximum five visits to American universities to study the academics, the campuses and the rowing programs at Princeton, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and Stanford.
“I was fortunate I could go fast on the ERG,” he added. “It gave me a lot of leverage. I had quite a good number of schools (recruit me). I was fortunate to have a choice.”
(From left) Max Froeschl, Jack Coulson, Samaya Khosla and Henrik Neuspiel of the Ottawa Rowing Club will be racing for the Canadian junior national team on July 15-16 in Michigan. Photo provided
He plans to study either chemical engineering or finance at Dartmouth, whose head coach is Wyatt Allen, an Olympic gold medallist at the 2004 Athens Summer Games and a bronze-medal winner at the 2008 Athens Games in the men’s eights.
“It will definitely be an uphill battle,” Neuspiel said about his freshman rowing season. “The program has 40 to 50 guys. I don’t expect to push the top boats immediately. I want to work hard under their guidance.
“In my first year, I will not be the fastest. In the second, third and fourth years, I want to enjoy the whole process and come out with success through hard work and improvement.”
Neuspiel is in the early days of developing into a rower. He was successful going forward as a kayaker. Now, he wants to do the same, but going backwards.
“Personally, I need to be more comfortable. I’ll start slow. Then, I’ll move up and up to a comfortable racing speed,” he outlined.
“Rowing was always what I wanted to end up doing. It was a little delayed.”
Read More of our 2025 High School Best Series as we tip our caps to top local student-athletes at: OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-High-School-Best-2025
Martin Cleary has written about amateur sports for 51 years. A past Canadian sportswriter of the year and Ottawa Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement in Sport Media honouree, Martin retired from full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen in 2012, but continued to write a bi-weekly “High Achievers” column for the Citizen/Sun.
When the pandemic struck, Martin created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times, via his Twitter account at first and now here at OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.
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