A SENSE OF normal gradually returned to to the world of athletics.
For Seattle Pacific, that meant getting back to a regular schedule of sports, starting this past fall with the resumption of cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, and volleyball.
Soccer and volleyball competed with abbreviated, nonconference schedules in the spring of 2021. The women’s soccer team was nationally ranked and put together an 8-0-1 record. On the men’s side, SPU went 3-2-1. The volleyball squad was 11-7. Just one cross country meet took place, and Seattle Pacific won both the men’s and women’s races.
For those four fall sports, one of the most significant aspects of getting back into the normal routine was the opportunity to compete for a Great Northwest Athletic Conference championship and to aim for an NCAA postseason spot. No conference competition took place for any of them during the 2020–21 school year, and all of the fall national championships were canceled, as well.
With winter now approaching, SPU’s basketball teams, along with the indoor track and field teams, can aim for conference titles and postseason spots once again. The men and women played independent basketball schedules last winter with no playoffs. Indoor track athletes did not have any meet opportunities.
The new basketball season tipped off in mid-November with preseason tournaments. The GNAC schedule gets going in earnest after the holidays.
Indoor track, which always has just a handful of regular-season meets before the conference and national championships, starts in January.
Outdoor track and women’s rowing did go off as scheduled last spring, complete with GNAC and NCAA meets. The 2022 seasons for both will resume in March.
Falcons by the numbers
1
Seattle Pacific’s place at the GNAC women’s track & field meet May 2021
2
The Falcons’ position in the inaugural GNAC rowing regatta, May 2021
3.90
The cumulative grade-point average for the women’s cross country team, setting a GNAC record for highest ever by any team in any sport
5
Final national ranking for the women’s soccer team after putting together a 7-0-1 record
10
Number of victories by the men’s basketball team in its 13 games last winter. The Falcons had a pair of five-game winning streaks
11
Total number of titles won by the Falcon women out of the 21 events on the docket at the GNAC track & field meet
34
Number of Falcon student-athletes who earned GNAC Faculty Athletic Representative Scholar-Athlete Awards for maintaining a 3.85 or higher grade-point average
90
Total blocks by volleyball freshman Hannah Hair in 17 matches last season, 23 more than the second-highest total in the GNAC
