BEREA, OHIO -- Five Baldwin Wallace University fall sport teams will begin its seasons prior to the Labor Day holiday on Monday, September 1.
The volleyball team, 18-14 a year ago while playing one of the most difficult schedules in NCAA Division III, opens its season on Friday and Saturday, August 29-30 at the Kalamazoo (Mich.) College Hornet Invitational Tournament. Play begins on Friday with the Yellow Jackets competing against Anderson (Ind.) University at 4:00 p.m. and Olivet (Mich.) College at 6:00 p.m. On Saturday, Aug. 30, BW plays either Manchester (Ind.) College or Ohio Wesleyan University at 12:00 p.m. and either host Kalamazoo, Franklin (Ind.) College or Defiance College at 2:00 p.m. (Complete Volleyball Preview)
Also on Saturday, the men's and women's cross country teams travel to Hunting Valley to compete at the Annual Case Western Reserve University Bill Sudeck Invitational Meet at Squire Farms at 11:00 a.m. and then men's and women's soccer teams begin play at the Aug. 30-31 Penn State Behrend College Invitational Tournaments in Erie, Pennsylvania.
The women's cross country team returns a solid nucleus of runners and is seeking a second straight Ohio Athletic Conference title and its 12th OAC crown in the past 17 years. The men's program is expected to be even better than its team of a year ago that made great strides from the previous season. The men's soccer team opens its season on Friday against the State University of New York at Geneseo (SUNY-Geneseo) at 2:00 p.m. and plays either host Penn State Behrend or Utica (N.Y.) College at either 2:00 or 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. A year ago, the BW men had its fifth straight winning season. The BW women's soccer squad enters 2008 with four straight 10-or-more win seasons and plays Penn State Behrend at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday and faces either SUNY-Geneseo or The College of Wooster on Sunday at either 10:00 a.m. or 12:00 noon. (Complete Men's and Women's Cross Country Preview) (Complete Men's Soccer Preview) (Complete Women's Soccer Preview)
In addition, the Yellow Jacket football team, 6-4 in 2007, and the men's golf team, 60-32-2 last season, open play on Sept. 6. The football team is at 25th-ranked Franklin (Ind.) and the golfers play a dual match against OAC and Cleveland cross-town rival John Carroll University. The women's golf team opens its season with new Head Coach Sean Strickland on Sunday, Sept. 14 when it hosts the Yellow Jacket Invitational Tournament at the Mallard Creek Golf Club in Columbia Station. (Complete Football Preview) (Complete Men's Golf Preview) (Complete Women's Golf Preview)
FOR MORE INFORMATION, please call Sports Information Director Kevin Ruple by telephone at 440-826-2327 or 2780 or e-mail him at kruple@bw.edu. You can get all of the latest information, including season previews, last season's statistics, coaching biographies, rosters, schedules, feature stories and archived results by logging onto the individual Web site for each individual sport.
