Cal Family – 

Greetings from beautiful Berkeley!

I'd like to begin this month's newsletter by toasting Chancellor Christ! As many of you likely know by now, the Chancellor announced her retirement last month. Chancellor Christ has been a transformational leader for our campus and an incredible teammate and advocate for our athletic department. The progress we have made as an athletic department has taken place with her unwavering support, and she has played a pivotal role in helping set the long-range direction of Cal Athletics. The good news is we get to reap the benefits of Chancellor Christ's leadership for another year until she steps down next June.

What a performance by our men's rowing team last month! Not only did head coach Scott Frandsen and the team win their second consecutive national championship, but they also swept all four championship races for the first time in program history! The varsity eight, second varsity eight, third varsity eight and varsity four all crossed the finish line first at Mercer Lake in New Jersey. That marked just the second time in history a team has swept through the quartet of races at the IRA National Championships. Not surprisingly, after the season Coach Frandsen was honored as the National Coach of the Year, the entire coaching staff was named Staff of the Year and junior Luca Vieira was selected as the Coxswain of the Year. A huge congratulations to the men's rowing team for a dominant performance, not only at the national championships but the entire season!

The men's rowing team's showing was part of a memorable winter and spring season for us, as we saw 15 of our teams reach the postseason! Overall for the 2022-23 academic year, we had 17 teams reach postseason play and nine finish the season ranked in the top 10! Along with men's rowing, men's water polo and men's swimming & diving also won national championships (and each also repeated as well), and Destin Lasco of men's swimming & diving won an individual national championship in the 200-yard backstroke. Men's rowing and women's gymnastics won Pac-12 championships, and we finished 22nd in the final Learfield Director's Cup standings – significant progress from finishing 40^th during the COVID-19 season of 2020-21. Our goal is to get into the top 15 nationally, and we continue to work hard to provide our teams with the necessary resources to get the job done. All of this incredible athletic success was accomplished while our student-athletes recorded the highest Graduation Success Rate in our history and the second-best single-year Academic Progress Rate ever, making their performance even more special!

As many of you know, we lost a Golden Bear great in May when Joe Kapp passed away at the age of 85. We had a wonderful celebration of life for Joe at the University Club at California Memorial Stadium, as around 200 people were on hand to share stories about all of his accomplishments and contributions to Cal over so many years. We are certainly going to miss Joe, and our condolences go out to his loved ones.

Last week, we hosted one of my favorite events of the year in Lake Tahoe - our Cal Athletics Coaches' Caravan at Gar Woods Grill & Pier with the help of our Bears in the Woods alumni chapter. We had over 150 people attend this lively event that featured coaches Mark Madsen, Charmin Smith, Amanda Augustus, and Jake Spavital. Big thanks to Tom and Maureen Turner, owners of Gar Woods, who make this annual event possible. We are grateful!!!

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has given to Cal Athletics this year. You have made it possible for us to support our 850+ student-athletes and ensure our programs have the resources they need to be successful

June 23 marked the end of our year-long celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation enacted by Congress in 1972 that prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities. Our athletic department honored the occasion in a variety of ways, including having each of our teams dedicate one home event to the celebration. Some of the festivities included in-person visits by such student-athlete dignitaries as three-time NCAA Swimmer of the Year Natalie Coughlin and former women's basketball star Colleen Galloway, who was the first female student-athlete at Cal to receive an athletic scholarship. Our employee engagement group "Women Leaders of Cal" also hosted a staff kickball game, and student-athletes, coaches and staff were issued commemorative Title IX anniversary T-shirts at the beginning of the academic year that they were able to wear throughout the year to demonstrate their support. Although our official celebration is over, we recognize there is still much work to be done – and our department will continue to be a leader in the quest for gender equality in college athletics.

Our new partnership with Nike and BSN Sports started on Saturday, and we are excited that our teams will be wearing the swoosh starting in the fall. We plan on revealing each of our teams' new gear in the weeks ahead. 

It's exciting to see our football and men's and women's basketball teams back on campus for summer workouts. Each of our teams has several new faces, and our student-athletes and coaches are hard at work preparing for their upcoming seasons. I know our coaches are excited about the future, and I really feel like this could be a breakthrough year for these teams, student-athletes and athletic department!

In May, our DEIBJ office led 34 student-athletes, staff and coaches at the Black Student-Athlete Summit at USC. The group attended three full days of packed programming centered around the Black student-athlete experience, professional development and activism. I was especially proud to see Dr. Ty-Ron Douglas, our Associate Athletics Director for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging & Justice, be selected as the Male Professional of the Year at the Summit!

This is a special time of year. Our last sports have completed their seasons and our staff is already planning for next year while also working on strategic initiatives for the longer haul. We are also trying to squeeze in a few days to recharge, and then get ready for another exciting season!

Best wishes from Cal Athletics have a wonderful summer.

Go Bears!



Jim