February, 2011
Dear Eagle Family,
Well, we certainly could not have had a better start to 2011 given what transpired on the evening of January 7. I think that date will forever be remembered in Eastern annals as the date in which many things for the University came of age. In front of a nationwide audience on ESPN2 and in front of the Vice President of the United States, our football team displayed the character and grit it had all season long by erasing a 19-point deficit en route to our first-ever Division I National Championship. Since that evening, it has been a whirlwind but a terrific whirlwind. The outpouring of support from the Eastern Community, Cheney, Spokane, the State and the Region has been overwhelming and it will no doubt take us parts of the next several months to thank everyone and every entity that made this all possible. We obviously look forward to continuing to move the program forward and feeding off this tremendous accomplishment. Congratulations to Coach Baldwin his staff and our student-athletes who did just a terrific job achieving this feat.
Football ‘11 – We announced our schedule last week, and as I was quoted in the release below I do wish we could have found a way to play one more home game in Cheney. But scheduling is very inexact and the ability to dial-in 10 FCS games was something that we wanted to secure rather than potentially waiting longer into the spring before we tried to contract our 11th game. The South Dakota game is a one-year arrangement as they agreed to a guarantee for us to play in Vermillion, while Cal Poly is a home and home beginning on the road in ‘11. As we have discussed before, the start of our year is always interesting because our team literally has six weeks of practice/games before the academic quarter begins (next year it will be during our first home game on September 24). So the ability to weave in road games at that time of year (especially two bus trips) can in some ways be a positive from a focus/team building perspective. http://www.goeags.com/sports/m-footbl/2010-11/releases/11fbJan27Schedule
Congratulations – To our December Scholar-Athletes of the month – Jeff Minnerly and Tatjana Sparavalo…http://www.goeags.com/genrel/releases/11genDecScholarAthletes
STRETCH RUN – Both our men’s and women’s basketball teams are in the thick of their respective Big Sky Conference seasons and each are in the middle of the playoff picture. The men are currently 4-5 while the women are 4-3. Each team will be looking to finish with a strong kick in hopes to make the six-team playoff field. Look forward to seeing you in Reese…
KILLIN ‘11 – Mark your calendar…April 30 for our annual dinner, dance, and auction!!
RAVER GOLF – August 3rd…join us for our department golf fundraiser presented by Harvest Foods. For information on both of these events…log onto www.goeags.com
Until next month…Go Eagles!!
Bill
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