Dear Torero Supporters:
I hope this letter finds you and your loved ones in good health, safe and successfully navigating through these challenging and unprecedented times. Our prayers are with you.
As the health emergency related to the novel coronavirus continues to unfold in San Diego and throughout the world, I wanted to be sure you were aware of the strong culture of care that is in place to support our scholar-athletes at USD. Because all USD classes are now being taught remotely, and our residence halls have closed, all 400+ of our scholar-athletes have moved away from the campus – generally, either to their home or to off-campus housing in the San Diego-area. Their health and welfare remains our highest priority, and we have made decisions over the last three weeks that are consistent with that priority.
Our focus since the inception of this crisis has been to continue to deliver the services necessary for our scholar-athletes' success. In particular:
- Remote academic services to support our scholar-athletes for the remainder of the semester. Our terrific academic support staff is facilitating remote tutoring, study hall etc., using Zoom video conferencing technology that is available to the entire university community;
- Remote sports performance services – e.g. nutrition, strength & conditioning, sport psychology, etc., through Zoom and other performance-specific platforms;
- Remote life skills programming, including career development opportunities that will be helpful during the spring semester and beyond
With the exception of a very small number of mission-critical employees who remain on campus, our coaching and administrative staff is now also working remotely. And while there will not be any practice or competition for the remainder of the Spring semester, our coaches are remaining in frequent communication with members of their teams, and they continue to lead, teach and mentor from afar. Naturally, they are continuing to recruit the next class of exceptional Torero scholar-athletes, as well.
While we will undoubtedly look back on the Spring of 2020 as a year in which all of our spring sports seasons ended so abruptly,
we will also remember the year for the extraordinary achievements of so many of our teams and scholar-athletes, including, but not limited to 124 total wins in all sports (the 2
nd most among WCC schools); conference championships and NCAA Playoff/Tournament appearances in both Football and Volleyball; a scintillating finish and run to the WCC championship game and the brink of the NCAA Tournament by the Women's Basketball team; four All-American awards earned by Men's Soccer Player Miguel Berry (the 1
st round draft choice of Major League Soccer's Columbus Crew), Football players Michael Bandy and Dalton Kincaid, and Volleyball player Grace Frohling; two Academic All-Americans (Men's Soccer's Berry and Henry Lander), and three conference Coaches of the Year in
Dale Lindsey (Football),
Jennifer Petrie (Volleyball) and
Cindy Fisher (Women's Basketball). Most importantly, our scholar-athletes earned a cumulative GPA of 3.20 (the highest on record) and contributed several thousand hours of service in our community. It has, indeed, been a very special year that we will not forget.
Thank you so much for your continued support of Torero scholar-athletes and your investment in our intercollegiate athletics program. As I hope you realize, your support of, and investment in, our program makes our vision of
Winning in the Classroom, Winning on the Playing Field and Winning in the Community possible. We are grateful!
Warm regards,
Bill McGillis
