Eastern’s newly revived men’s golf program completes its inaugural season.

In the fall of 2024, Eastern announced the return of varsity men’s golf after an absence of close to 25 years. Soon after, Tim Collins, Eastern’s athletics director, brought on Russell Grove to restart the program.

Grove, a certified PGA class member who came to EWU after a decade coaching at North Idaho College, is the sixth head coach in EWU men’s golf history. “I look forward to building a program focused on fostering connections, building tradition and providing our student-athletes with opportunities to excel academically and athletically,” he said in a statement to local media.

This year’s inaugural campaign saw the fledgling Eagles compete in a fall schedule that took them to WSU for the Washington State Palouse Collegiate tournament; the Tindall tournament, hosted by the University of Washington; the University of Colorado’s Mark Simpson Invitational; and, finally, the Oregon State Beaver Invitational at the Illahe Hills Country Club in Salem, Oregon.

Tournament results were mixed, and there were predictable growing pains. But there was also plenty to feel good about, perhaps most notably the play of freshman standouts Cal Anderson and Eli McNelly, along with the consistent contributions of junior transfer Hogan Park. At season’s end, Park underscored his promising future by qualifying as an amateur for the PGA’s World Wide Technology Championship held this fall in Los Cabos, Mexico. “It was super exciting and nerve wracking to be able to play in a PGA event and competing with the best in the world,” he said.

Eastern brought back men’s golf after the program was discontinued following the 2001-2002 academic year. The 10-member Eagle team is competing as an NCAA Division I member of the Big Sky Conference. To make room for men’s golf, EWU discontinued its varsity men’s tennis program.

“It has been a valuable learning experience,” Grove said at season’s end. “We’re going to have to work really hard over the off-season to get our scores where they need to be heading into the spring. It is also an important time to make some adjustments; of getting the core culture and competitiveness of this team headed in the right direction to establish what this program can and will be.”

That spring season isn’t far off. The now-more-seasoned Eagle men’s golfers will be back on the links beginning Feb. 23 at the Wyoming Desert Intercollegiate in Palm Desert, California.

For most teams, a painful season like EWU’s 2023 soccer campaign would take years to bounce back from.

Matches were usually tight, play was always competitive, but poor results spoke for themselves: Just two wins, 14 losses and one draw. After a particularly frustrating, season-ending losing streak that concluded with a dismal 4-0 beatdown at Northern Colorado, there seemed to be only darkness at the end of the tunnel.

But the Eagle women were undaunted. And well before the 2024 season commenced in August, they were laying the groundwork — both mentally and physically — for the powerful comeback that propelled this years’ squad to conference-title contenders. “I saw it last year,” said junior defender Becca Gaido. “I knew the players on our team were capable of this, and I knew what we could do. We were just not getting the results we thought we deserved.”

“Our record didn’t match our ability” added Chloe Pattison, the team’s superstar striker. “A lot of the Big Sky felt we were a good team; we just couldn’t find our results.”

That all changed this fall. Picked in preseason polling to finish eighth, Eastern instead finished 4-1-3 in conference play, earning third place and their first conference tournament appearance since 2019. It was one of the most dramatic win-loss turnarounds in the nation.

Pattison, a junior from Lake Stevens, Washington, was a catalyst for the Eagle offense all season long, leading the conference in goals, shots on goal, and points. In November, she was named the Big Sky’s co-offensive Player of the Year and, along with the Eagle’s attacking midfielder  Kendall Moore, earned a place on the Big Sky’s All-Conference First Team.

Pattison and her teammates credit the confidence and work ethic of fourth-year head coach Missy Strasburg for fueling the turnaround. That assessment was shared by Strasburg’s coaching colleagues, who awarded her the Big Sky’s Coach of the Year honors, the third Eastern coach to be so named.

All told, Eastern earned four Player of the Week awards in 2024, and matched 2017 with a total of six players named to All-Conference teams. Eastern’s junior goalkeeper, Kamryn Willoughby, was one of these six standouts, leading a defense that kept five clean sheets.

Unfortunately, after earning a three seed in the conference tournament, the Eagles’ title hopes ended — after 20 minutes of overtime and a penalty shoot-out — against Portland State, 1-1 (7-6). “Having such an incredible season end in PKs is absolutely gut-wrenching,” said Strasburg after the match. “But our women put everything they had into that tournament quarterfinal, and we are deeply proud of their effort and commitment to each other.”

Eastern’s track and field athletes, stars in the classroom, aim to up their game.

Athletes with Eastern’s men’s and women’s track and field teams have long been leaders in the classroom — this year’s women’s team tallied 25 Big Sky All-Academic awards, while the men earned 17. These days they are also asserting themselves in competition.

At the 2024 Big Sky Championships, led by redshirt junior Caitlin “Egypt” Simmons, Eagle athletes braved the April snows in Bozeman to lay the groundwork for what Erin Tucker, director of Eastern track and field, says will be a bright future. 

 Simmons brought home gold and established herself as the Big Sky’s premier women’s jumper after hitting the 6.18-meter mark in her long jump performance. In the triple jump, she came up just short of a second gold after nailing a personal best of 12.88 meters. Her teammate Savannah Schultz joined her on the podium with a third-place finish and a bronze medal.

“Egypt is still the Big Sky jump queen in my book, winning three of the four horizontal jumps and placing second in the fourth, is dominant,” Tucker said after the event. “I know Coach Jo [Brinson] and Egypt wanted to sweep, and that will be the goal next year for sure.”

On the men’s side, senior Cody Teevens earned the Eagles a silver in the decathlon, with a 6,184 total score to secure an All-Conference honor. During the event, Teevens earned wins in the 100 meter and the 110-meter hurdles, adding second-place finishes in the long jump, discus throw and javelin. His teammate Colin Hughes added a win in the 1,500-meter decathlon race.

Overall, the Eagle women finished eighth, while the men secured ninth place. It was a finish, Tucker says, that’s not in any way predictive of where his athletes are headed next spring: “I promise you we are a better team than we finished today, and we will never finish this low again!”

For EWU’s new men’s basketball coach, Cheney is familiar ground.

Eastern’s new men’s head basketball coach, Dan Monson, was the talk of the basketball world earlier this year when, after being fired as the head coach of Long Beach State, he led his team to a Big West Conference Tournament title and a NCAA Tournament berth.

He described the lame-duck post-season coaching experience as “surreal,” later telling ESPN that the conference tournament win and Big Dance appearance was “a life-changing week — in a good way.”

Over his career, Monson has led his programs to 13 postseason appearances, including four NCAA Tournament bids and nine NIT appearances, winning seven games. He’s also chalked up nine conference championships and earned five Coach of the Year awards.

That “good way” change soon extended to Eagle fans, when, following Long Beach’s exit from the NCAA Tournament, Monson accepted Eastern’s head coaching job. The position was open after the Eagle’s previous leader, David Riley, accepted the top job at Washington State.

Over his career, Monson has led his programs to 13 postseason appearances, including four NCAA Tournament bids and nine NIT appearances, winning seven games. He’s also chalked up nine conference championships and earned five Coach of the Year awards.

The move to Eastern has been a homecoming of sorts for Monson, 62, who spent part of his childhood in Cheney while his dad coached basketball at Cheney High. And the regional ties don’t stop there.

In the late 1990s, Monson coached up the road at Gonzaga, where, under his leadership, the ’Zags advanced to the 1999 Elite Eight, winning both the WCC regular season and conference tournament championships that season.

After leaving the Inland Northwest, he served an eight-season stint at the University of Minnesota. Next came Long Beach State, where Monson led “the Beach” for 17 years, becoming the program’s all-time winningest coach.

The return to the PNW, Monson says, brings things full circle. “This is a part of my legacy,” he told The Spokesman Review earlier this spring. “It started at Gonzaga. I’d like to make it grow more by sustaining what the last three coaches at Eastern started. That’s really important to me.”

After a disappointing 2023, Eagle Football appears poised to bounce back big next year.

It didn’t start out like a season to forget. Yes, there were a couple of tough losses on the road; one to perennial FCS powerhouse North Dakota State, another to FBS mid-major stalwart Fresno State. But the home campaign began with real promise: a decisive win over 19th-ranked Southeastern Louisiana, followed by a 3-point triumph over Big Sky Conference rival UC-Davis — a victory that saw Coach Aaron Best’s squad return to the familiar territory of an FCS Top-25 ranking.

Sadly, that week-four ranking marked the high point of an autumn that saw an Eagle team play hard, play close, but too often come up short. By the time the Eagles dropped their home finale to Northern Arizona, the win-loss tally stood at a dismal 4-7 overall, 10th in the Big Sky Conference.

Still, there were high points, among them a big win over Weber State that put an exclamation point on an inspiring 100th Homecoming celebration. Perhaps more to the point for Eagle fans, the team’s gritty play showed plenty of reasons for optimism as it retools for next year.

“I would challenge people to say we didn’t show improvement from last year,” Collins said, adding that “especially next year, I think we’re set up for success.”

Athletics director Tim Collins perhaps summed it up best in a post-season interview with The Spokesman-Review. “I would challenge people to say we didn’t show improvement from last year,” Collins said, adding that “especially next year, I think we’re set up for success.”

One reason for Collins’ optimism was the play of Efton Chism III, a junior wide receiver who racked up stats not seen since the days of Eastern superstar Cooper Kupp.

Chism spent the 2023 season ranked among conference and national leaders in just about every receiving category. He ended on a particularly high note, with a 3-touchdown effort against Northern Arizona, a performance that anchored a season with 84 catches for 934 yards and 8 touchdowns. Chism now ranks third on EWU’s all-time career receptions list. His achievements made him a unanimous choice for first team All Big Sky Conference honors. Chism was joined on the first team All-Conference honor list by redshirt senior Marlon Jones Jr., a standout defensive back who wraps up his EWU career with 40 career games played, 158 total tackles and 9 interceptions. Redshirt senior tight end Blake Gobel and junior kick returner Michael Wortham, meanwhile, were named to the All-Conference second team, while starting quarterback Kekoa Visperas, a redshirt sophomore, snagged an honorable mention.

Conference honors aside, Head Coach Aaron Best told Learfield’s
Eagle Flight podcast that the lack of wins was difficult to take — as was a season where, despite his team’s very real effort, the Eagles just couldn’t seem to turn the corner. “There were a lot of close games, a lot of tough moments, throughout the course of the season,” Best said. “We overcame some of them, but not enough of them. But I was proud of those guys — especially the way they ended the season — even without the win.”

While the end to Eastern’s greater ambitions came too soon — a heartbreaking final-second loss in the 2023 Big Sky Basketball Championship tournament — EWU’s men’s basketball team walked off the court in Boise knowing they’d already cemented a season for the history books.  

Head coach David Riley’s squad, a group just a year removed from a big rebuild, came into the season with three returning starters, a core of experienced role players and high expectations. In preseason polling, however, coaches and sportswriters expressed their doubts, with both groups picking Eastern to finish no higher than fifth.

The Eagles answered the doubters with a remarkable regular season that included a Big Sky record 16-0 start to conference play. That streak, part of a record-tying 18-game stretch of victories, earned them the regular season Big Sky Championship. 

Following a heartbreaking, last-second conference tournament exit, the team got a nod from the National Invitation Tournament, where, in the first round, they avenged an early-season defeat to Washington State with a gritty road win in Pullman. It was just the second postseason game win in program history.

“The talk in the locker room after the game was very, very brief about this game in particular. We played a good team and lost,” Riley said. “But what these guys have done throughout the season, I can’t tell them enough how much our coaching staff appreciates them.”

A second-round loss to Oklahoma State brought the 2022-23 season to a close. Then the accolades began pouring in. 

In March, Eagle’s guard Steele Venters was named the Big Sky’s Most Valuable Player, the conference’s most coveted individual honor. It was the fifth time in seven years —and seventh time overall — that the Big Sky’s top accolade had been awarded to an Eastern player. In addition, Venters’ teammate Angelo Allegri was named to the All-Conference First Team, while forward Ethan Price earned an All-Conference Honorable Mention.

Coach Riley, meanwhile, was named Big Sky Coach of the Year, joining a distinguished list of seven previous EWU head coaches who have been awarded the conference’s highest coaching honor. 

Not surprisingly, it was Riley who, after the season ended in Stillwater, shifted the focus back to where it belongs — on the student athletes.  

“The talk in the locker room after the game was very, very brief about this game in particular. We played a good team and lost,” Riley said. “But what these guys have done throughout the season, I can’t tell them enough how much our coaching staff appreciates them.”

As Title IX turned 50 this year, EWU took time to reflect on the landmark federal statute.

This year marked a half-century since the adoption of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in education programs and other activities that received federal funding. At Eastern and around the nation, colleges and universities have used the anniversary to reflect on Title IX’s seismic impact in higher education and beyond. 

“It wasn’t that long ago that your gender would have had a really big impact on what you were able to do and how much you could achieve,” says Annika Scharosch, JD, Eastern’s Title IX coordinator and associate vice president for civil rights, compliance and enterprise risk management. These days, she adds, students don’t have to worry about being denied admission to professional programs or held back due to their gender. That includes women who want to become doctors and men want to become nurses, as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community.

At Eastern, past enrollment numbers bring Title IX’s true impact into focus. Back in 1972, there were 3,806 men and 2,920 women enrolled at the university, then called Eastern Washington State College. At today’s Eastern Washington University, the student body last year included 6,562 women and 4,312 men.

Nationwide, U.S. Census Bureau data shows that in 1970, pre-Title IX, just 8 percent of women earned a college degree. By 2020, the number of female college graduates increased to nearly 33 percent, a number exceeding that of male graduates.

EWU Athletic Director Lynn Hickey says she experienced this changing landscape firsthand, both as a pre-Title IX high school basketball player and a post-Title IX college athlete, coach and athletic director. 

“I grew up playing half-court basketball in the state of Oklahoma,” recalls Hickey. Back then, she says, women’s basketball was a three-on-three, half-court game because male administrators thought females didn’t have the stamina to compete full-court.

Over the years, as Title IX’s impact on athletics created a battleground for women’s rights, thousands of women — and men — stepped up to champion equity. Hickey credits her father, who coached middle and high school sports for 47 years, with inspiring her love of athletics. 

Hickey’s groundbreaking résumé includes becoming the first female athletic director at the University of Texas, San Antonio. At the time she was the only female Division 1 athletic director in Texas. When Hickey left the job 18 years later, her list of accomplishments included starting football, women’s soccer and women’s golf programs. She points to the experience of her daughter, Lauren, as evidence of Title IX’s generational sway.

Lauren not only grew up in a world where her mother was high-achieving in the male-dominated field of collegiate athletics, Hickey says, her aunts included a doctor, two attorneys and a social worker.

“Just think that in one generation how everything has changed,” Hickey says. “You have to give Title IX credit for that turnaround.”

On May 1, after a two-year pandemic hiatus, the Bloomsday road race made its triumphant return to the streets of Spokane. Much to the chagrin of their competition, EWU’s Red team, a running force that has dominated the race’s “Corporate Cup” competition for 23 straight years, were also back.

By race’s end, to the surprise of pretty much no one, team Red had once again finished with the title, racking up a perfect 3,000-point score.

“We’re the most successful athletic team that Eastern has ever produced,” quipped team member Grant Smith, a professor emeritus of English at EWU who, at age 84, has for four-decades been the team’s leader and lead recruiter.

Eagle football, of course, has won a national title. But EWU Red’s now 24-year-long streak gives that moment of glory a run (so-to-speak) for its money.

Bloomsday’s Corporate Cup is sort of a race within a race, with runners representing a business or organization competing for top places and times within 13 different age groups for men and women. The first-place finisher in each group contributes 1,000 points to the team total, with subsequent finishers receiving points based on their proximity to the winner’s time.

Teams are limited to five runners. Three of these earn scores, while the remaining two stand in for tie-breaking purposes.

“It is cool when we hit 3,000, and it’s cool when we are all perfect across the board,” said team Red’s David Millet, director of EWU’s Veterans Resource Center. “It doesn’t happen very often.”

But often enough, apparently. This year’s total of 3,000, in fact, marks the seventh-straight year Red has recorded a perfect score, and the 10th time overall. “What would you equate it to?” said Millet of the streak (before this year’s win). “It’s like the Triple Crown that Cooper Kupp won. It’s that one year where everything lines up and falls into place.”

In the run up to this year’s race, Curt Kinghorn of Runners Soul, a running-gear retailer in Spokane, wryly commented on his own previous teams’ track record of futility against Eastern’s Bloomsday runners. Try as they might, he said, his group could never match the scores of Red’s older guys, who excelled within their age groups. “They refuse to lose,” says Kinghorn. “It seemed they kept getting faster the older they got.”

— By Dave Cook. An earlier version of this story, Seeing ‘Red,’ appeared under Cook’s byline in The Spokesman-Review.

Monica Jaenicke, athlete, alumna and sports communicator, will lead EWU Athletics’ outreach.

Over the course of his 31-year career at Eastern, Sports Information Director Dave Cook became the omnipresent go-to for all-things Eagles. After Cook announced his retirement earlier this year, his long-time assistant, Monica Jaenicke ’14, stepped up to fill the void. This October she was named Cook’s permanent successor.

Jaenicke’s new job will come with a new title, assistant athletic director for communications. In the role she will work under Todd McGann, who was recently elevated to interim deputy athletic director for external operations, in directing media and public outreach for all 14 of Eastern Washington’s athletics programs. Jaenicke has served as the assistant director for communications for the past four-and-a-half years.

“Monica is a very talented writer with a solid grasp on the various and ever-changing media platforms that intercollegiate athletics must address,” says EWU Athletic Director Lynn Hickey. 

“She has established relationships with our local and Big Sky media partners, and as an EWU alum and former Eagle student-athlete, she will be a great asset as we continue to build our communications office.” 

Before joining Eastern’s professional staff, Jaenicke — who, like Cook, is a talented distance runner — worked as an undergraduate student assistant in the sports information office. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in communications, and was a Big Sky Conference All-Academic honoree in each of the four years in which she competed with Eastern’s cross country, and track and field teams. Jaenicke also holds a master’s degree in sports management from Western Illinois University. 

“I am looking forward to continuing to give back and publicize what our student-athletes and department are accomplishing in and out of competition,” Jaenicke said after accepting her new gig. “I would not be in this position today without my friend and mentor, Dave Cook. I am thankful for all he taught me and am committed to continuing his efforts.”

Joddie Gleason, Eastern’s new women’s basketball head coach, aims to elevate a program in search of titles.

Helping student athletes flourish both on and off the basketball court is the goal for Joddie Gleason, who in November made her debut as head coach of Eastern’s women’s basketball team.

Gleason comes to Eastern from Seattle University, where she served as an associate head coach. She also has 12 years of head coaching experience with the Lumberjacks of Humboldt State University in California, where she earned California Collegiate Athletics Association Coach of the Year honors in 2015. Gleason succeeds Wendy Schuller, who had served as women’s basketball head coach since 2001.  

“I am very grateful for the opportunity to be the next women’s basketball coach at Eastern Washington,” Gleason said after accepting the job in May. “Throughout the interview process, I have been lucky to meet so many great people at Eastern and know that it is the right fit for me and my family.”

“I am very grateful for the opportunity to be the next women’s basketball coach at Eastern Washington,” she said after accepting the job in May. “Throughout the interview process, I have been lucky to meet so many great people at Eastern and know that it is the right fit for me and my family… [Eastern’s] student-centered approach aligns with my values as a leader and creates additional excitement to get started.”  

Gleason’s new boss, EWU Athletic Director Lynn Hickey, said that she expects big things. “We look forward to working with her to help rebuild our program to be a dominant force in Big Sky women’s basketball competition.”

At Seattle University, Gleason worked as the team’s offensive coordinator. As head coach at Humboldt State, the Lumberjacks qualified for the NCAA DII Tournament four times and won two California Collegiate Athletic Association championships. Her coach of the year honors came after guiding the Lumberjacks to a 23-6 overall record and a regular season title.

Gleason, who earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California State University, Chico, also served as the head coach at Butte Community College in Oroville, California, from 1999-2004.
“I can’t wait to start working with this group of young women and to build something special that the passionate Eagle fans can be proud of… Go Eags!”