Post by Aggie77 on Oct 31, 2006 18:33:48 GMT -5
Former No More
Winning is the easiest way to move on.
It was a most unexpected coming-out party. As an autumnal snow fell in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Bridgewater College Eagles football team earned something that had never been associated with their football team in its 73-year history: national respect.
Division III’s Bridgewater College leapfrogged from cellar-dwelling obscurity to nationally televised prominence in just three years. Since the decade began, Bridgewater has become home to the winningest college football team in Virginia. Perhaps even more amazing is that the Eagles have maintained a distinctive position as one of the best teams in the NCAA’s largest division.
Let’s get the facts out of the way.
Prior to 2000, the Eagles had just six winning seasons in their 73 years. Since then, Bridgewater has managed to win over 85 percent of their games, sporting a 64-11 record, plus:
- Five consecutive Old Dominion Athletic Conference championships.
- Six straight NCAA playoff appearances.
- Ten NCAA playoff victories.
- An appearance in Stagg Bowl XXIX, the 2001 D3 national championship game.
Life has been good for the Eagles and their fans. How they have risen to prominence as one of the best programs in D3 is another story.
Head Coach Mike Clark came to Bridgewater in 1995 for his first head coaching position. Clark had spent eleven seasons as an assistant to legendary Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer. Having started as a linebackers coach under Beamer at Murray State University, Clark shifted his tack to Blacksburg as Beamer’s defensive coordinator for five seasons.
“When I came to Bridgewater, and even after my first few years there,” Clark said, “I was always referred to as the former defensive coordinator at Virginia Tech.”
And that former coordinator struggled in his first few years at Bridgewater. The Eagles failed to win a game in Clark’s first season and rebounded with a healthy 5-5 in 1996. A 2-8 1997 was followed by another lowly 0-10 in 1998.
“1992 at Virginia Tech was a bad year. We had eight losses and had six games where we led in the fourth quarter and lost. We found a way to screw it up,” Clark reminisced. “I didn’t leave Tech. I was fired. There were many similarities from 1992 at Tech and my 0-10 year at Bridgewater.”
The national spotlight, the haggling alumni, and the intense local scrutiny that D1 big-conference programs face were not an issues at Bridgewater, and that may have helped Clark keep his job there.
“After that 0-10, the president said to me, ‘You’re my guy. I’ll give you one more season.’ And I appreciated that extra chance and decided to make something of it. I didn’t get that at Virginia Tech.”
The rest is, indeed, history, and an impressive one at that. Clark made as much of his second chance as he possibly could have. Bridgewater chalked up a 5-5 1999 en route to a 9-1 regular season in 2000, the best season in school history. With that mark came one of the three highly coveted at-large bids to the NCAA playoffs as the Eagles would travel to favored Washington & Jefferson College.
With Washington & Jefferson having made two national championship appearances in 1992 and 1996, history favored the Presidents over the Eagles. They had managed a 9-1 record and had a significant advantage over their second-season newbie opponents. Despite it being five days before Thanksgiving, it was just 30 degrees at kickoff as the snow and wind whipped through Cameron Stadium. The weather seemed to add insult to injury for the Eagles as the Presidents opened up a 25-point lead just two minutes into the second quarter.
And then it happened.
Outscoring W&J 35-7 over the next 24 minutes, Bridgewater had an improbable 38-35 lead en route to an eye-popping 59-42 win that sent a cold and relatively empty visitors sideline into an unlikely frenzy.
The Eagles would return home and then ship off to San Antonio, Texas for a second round game in which they would eventually fall, but only after a spectacular showing against a tough Trinity University team, 47-41.
The Eagles had landed.
Not only were they just two years removed from a 0-10 season, but they had advanced to the postseason, won a game, and nearly taken a second round win 2,000 miles from home. And the Eagles would be no one-hit wonder.
2001 would be no different for Bridgewater as the Eagles steamrolled the Old Dominion Athletic Conference for their first ever conference championship, won three postseason games, and advanced to Stagg Bowl XXIX against Mount Union College. The Purple Raiders owned four national championships and came into the 2001 crowning game with an 81-1 record since the beginning of the 1996 season. The Eagles managed a respectable 30-27 defeat at the hands of a dynasty and their first appearance before a nationally televised audience.
As the success grew, so too did the publicity. The Harrisonburg Daily News Record has a beat reporter that actually follows the Eagles during the season as opposed to interpreting a press release and compiling a story. A 2003 Bridgewater graduate, Matt Barnhart founded BridgewaterFootball.com, and the site has ballooned since it moved beyond the realm of just a school-hosted student website. With over 208,000 hits in three years, this isn’t your father’s football team.
“As webmaster, my ‘job’ is easy. They win,” Barnhart said. “I started in 2001 chronicling that great season, and it has only gotten better. We average more than 700 hits a day during the football season, and the attention paid to the Eagles has grown exponentially. Prior to the 1999 season, it was tough to find 1,000 seats filled at home games. BC now averages over 3,400 per home contest.” Road attendance figures have also increased as more BC students, alums, and general fans follow their team, while their opponents’ fans recognize the importance of a game against a national power. This season, Bridgewater’s Alumni Office has arranged for a fan bus to travel to each of the Eagles’ road games in 2006.
Success breeds success, and the Eagles have maintained their dominance in the ODAC. Bridgewater hasn’t lost a conference game since that memorable 2000 season, sporting a 35-0 ODAC mark since. As the Eagles have shined their light, it has forced their opponents to improve as well. “They are the team to beat, and they make us work for every recruit,” said Pedro Arruza, head coach at Randolph-Macon. “We want to be like them,” Guilford coach Kevin Kiesel similarly remarked, “[but] it’s not going to happen overnight.”
It makes you wonder: How did Bridgewater go from worst to first in two seasons?
“Just like my 2-8 year at Tech, our 0-10 year in 1998 was a competitive 0-10,” Coach Clark recalled. “But frankly, we found a way to lose; if we had played 15 games, we would have been 0-15. I believe that. I did my best work in 1998, keeping our team together. I had to re-recruit all our players. The last game in ‘98 was against Davidson, and we started 14 freshmen.”
Clark called in a sports psychologist to work with his team in preparing for a new leaf in 1999 and changed the way the team thought about everything. Those 14 freshmen who started the last game of a winless 1998 were the 14 seniors who led the Eagles onto the field in the 2001 Stagg Bowl.
The Eagles have now had two classes of football players graduate without a conference loss – players who never knew how mediocre, even bad, Bridgewater used to be. So, how do they stay on top?
“I can’t control what other people do, mentally or professionally. Our focus, as a team, is never on ‘defending’ ourselves,” Clark educates. “Our focus is on chasing, going after the next championship.” As if their next title would be their first, Clark turns to a new page each season, not seeing a new season as a continuation of a previous success.
Clark’s job has gotten increasingly difficult. Bridgewater’s success has forced his colleagues in athletic offices around Virginia and North Carolina to find ways to improve their programs and recruiting. Not only are the traditional rivals trying to stay afloat, but the state has been flooded with new teams. Since Clark took control of the Eagles, nine schools within a four-hour radius of Bridgewater have added football.
The Eagles began the 2006 season ranked 13th in the D3football.com Preseason Top 25 poll. They will play their ten games in the regular season and hope for continued success in the postseason. Last year, the Eagles fell in the national quarterfinals in another attempt to return to the Stagg Bowl.
Unless some dramatic television contract to air D3 games is revealed soon (highly unlikely), the Eagles will operate in their own world with crowds and fan support other similar schools envy and will hope to maintain their status as one of D3’s best.
“Once we started winning, I was no longer the former defensive coordinator from Frank Beamer’s Virginia Tech,” Clark shined. “I’m introduced as the head coach from Bridgewater College.” That means something now.
copyright 2006 Virginia Sports Report
Winning is the easiest way to move on.
It was a most unexpected coming-out party. As an autumnal snow fell in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Bridgewater College Eagles football team earned something that had never been associated with their football team in its 73-year history: national respect.
Division III’s Bridgewater College leapfrogged from cellar-dwelling obscurity to nationally televised prominence in just three years. Since the decade began, Bridgewater has become home to the winningest college football team in Virginia. Perhaps even more amazing is that the Eagles have maintained a distinctive position as one of the best teams in the NCAA’s largest division.
Let’s get the facts out of the way.
Prior to 2000, the Eagles had just six winning seasons in their 73 years. Since then, Bridgewater has managed to win over 85 percent of their games, sporting a 64-11 record, plus:
- Five consecutive Old Dominion Athletic Conference championships.
- Six straight NCAA playoff appearances.
- Ten NCAA playoff victories.
- An appearance in Stagg Bowl XXIX, the 2001 D3 national championship game.
Life has been good for the Eagles and their fans. How they have risen to prominence as one of the best programs in D3 is another story.
Head Coach Mike Clark came to Bridgewater in 1995 for his first head coaching position. Clark had spent eleven seasons as an assistant to legendary Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer. Having started as a linebackers coach under Beamer at Murray State University, Clark shifted his tack to Blacksburg as Beamer’s defensive coordinator for five seasons.
“When I came to Bridgewater, and even after my first few years there,” Clark said, “I was always referred to as the former defensive coordinator at Virginia Tech.”
And that former coordinator struggled in his first few years at Bridgewater. The Eagles failed to win a game in Clark’s first season and rebounded with a healthy 5-5 in 1996. A 2-8 1997 was followed by another lowly 0-10 in 1998.
“1992 at Virginia Tech was a bad year. We had eight losses and had six games where we led in the fourth quarter and lost. We found a way to screw it up,” Clark reminisced. “I didn’t leave Tech. I was fired. There were many similarities from 1992 at Tech and my 0-10 year at Bridgewater.”
The national spotlight, the haggling alumni, and the intense local scrutiny that D1 big-conference programs face were not an issues at Bridgewater, and that may have helped Clark keep his job there.
“After that 0-10, the president said to me, ‘You’re my guy. I’ll give you one more season.’ And I appreciated that extra chance and decided to make something of it. I didn’t get that at Virginia Tech.”
The rest is, indeed, history, and an impressive one at that. Clark made as much of his second chance as he possibly could have. Bridgewater chalked up a 5-5 1999 en route to a 9-1 regular season in 2000, the best season in school history. With that mark came one of the three highly coveted at-large bids to the NCAA playoffs as the Eagles would travel to favored Washington & Jefferson College.
With Washington & Jefferson having made two national championship appearances in 1992 and 1996, history favored the Presidents over the Eagles. They had managed a 9-1 record and had a significant advantage over their second-season newbie opponents. Despite it being five days before Thanksgiving, it was just 30 degrees at kickoff as the snow and wind whipped through Cameron Stadium. The weather seemed to add insult to injury for the Eagles as the Presidents opened up a 25-point lead just two minutes into the second quarter.
And then it happened.
Outscoring W&J 35-7 over the next 24 minutes, Bridgewater had an improbable 38-35 lead en route to an eye-popping 59-42 win that sent a cold and relatively empty visitors sideline into an unlikely frenzy.
The Eagles would return home and then ship off to San Antonio, Texas for a second round game in which they would eventually fall, but only after a spectacular showing against a tough Trinity University team, 47-41.
The Eagles had landed.
Not only were they just two years removed from a 0-10 season, but they had advanced to the postseason, won a game, and nearly taken a second round win 2,000 miles from home. And the Eagles would be no one-hit wonder.
2001 would be no different for Bridgewater as the Eagles steamrolled the Old Dominion Athletic Conference for their first ever conference championship, won three postseason games, and advanced to Stagg Bowl XXIX against Mount Union College. The Purple Raiders owned four national championships and came into the 2001 crowning game with an 81-1 record since the beginning of the 1996 season. The Eagles managed a respectable 30-27 defeat at the hands of a dynasty and their first appearance before a nationally televised audience.
As the success grew, so too did the publicity. The Harrisonburg Daily News Record has a beat reporter that actually follows the Eagles during the season as opposed to interpreting a press release and compiling a story. A 2003 Bridgewater graduate, Matt Barnhart founded BridgewaterFootball.com, and the site has ballooned since it moved beyond the realm of just a school-hosted student website. With over 208,000 hits in three years, this isn’t your father’s football team.
“As webmaster, my ‘job’ is easy. They win,” Barnhart said. “I started in 2001 chronicling that great season, and it has only gotten better. We average more than 700 hits a day during the football season, and the attention paid to the Eagles has grown exponentially. Prior to the 1999 season, it was tough to find 1,000 seats filled at home games. BC now averages over 3,400 per home contest.” Road attendance figures have also increased as more BC students, alums, and general fans follow their team, while their opponents’ fans recognize the importance of a game against a national power. This season, Bridgewater’s Alumni Office has arranged for a fan bus to travel to each of the Eagles’ road games in 2006.
Success breeds success, and the Eagles have maintained their dominance in the ODAC. Bridgewater hasn’t lost a conference game since that memorable 2000 season, sporting a 35-0 ODAC mark since. As the Eagles have shined their light, it has forced their opponents to improve as well. “They are the team to beat, and they make us work for every recruit,” said Pedro Arruza, head coach at Randolph-Macon. “We want to be like them,” Guilford coach Kevin Kiesel similarly remarked, “[but] it’s not going to happen overnight.”
It makes you wonder: How did Bridgewater go from worst to first in two seasons?
“Just like my 2-8 year at Tech, our 0-10 year in 1998 was a competitive 0-10,” Coach Clark recalled. “But frankly, we found a way to lose; if we had played 15 games, we would have been 0-15. I believe that. I did my best work in 1998, keeping our team together. I had to re-recruit all our players. The last game in ‘98 was against Davidson, and we started 14 freshmen.”
Clark called in a sports psychologist to work with his team in preparing for a new leaf in 1999 and changed the way the team thought about everything. Those 14 freshmen who started the last game of a winless 1998 were the 14 seniors who led the Eagles onto the field in the 2001 Stagg Bowl.
The Eagles have now had two classes of football players graduate without a conference loss – players who never knew how mediocre, even bad, Bridgewater used to be. So, how do they stay on top?
“I can’t control what other people do, mentally or professionally. Our focus, as a team, is never on ‘defending’ ourselves,” Clark educates. “Our focus is on chasing, going after the next championship.” As if their next title would be their first, Clark turns to a new page each season, not seeing a new season as a continuation of a previous success.
Clark’s job has gotten increasingly difficult. Bridgewater’s success has forced his colleagues in athletic offices around Virginia and North Carolina to find ways to improve their programs and recruiting. Not only are the traditional rivals trying to stay afloat, but the state has been flooded with new teams. Since Clark took control of the Eagles, nine schools within a four-hour radius of Bridgewater have added football.
The Eagles began the 2006 season ranked 13th in the D3football.com Preseason Top 25 poll. They will play their ten games in the regular season and hope for continued success in the postseason. Last year, the Eagles fell in the national quarterfinals in another attempt to return to the Stagg Bowl.
Unless some dramatic television contract to air D3 games is revealed soon (highly unlikely), the Eagles will operate in their own world with crowds and fan support other similar schools envy and will hope to maintain their status as one of D3’s best.
“Once we started winning, I was no longer the former defensive coordinator from Frank Beamer’s Virginia Tech,” Clark shined. “I’m introduced as the head coach from Bridgewater College.” That means something now.
copyright 2006 Virginia Sports Report
