May 16, 2012
BERKELEY -
With the California women's crew team winning the Pac-12 title on Sunday, May 13 at Lake Natoma, Calif., Cal earned its sixth conference championship of the 2011-12 athletic season, the most in the history of Golden Bear athletics.
The Cal field hockey team captured the first crown of the season, winning the NorPac Conference tournament with a dramatic 1-0 shutout victory over Stanford in the title game held Nov. 5 on the Stanford campus.
The Bears then won five Pac-12 championships with women's swimming getting a victory in the pool in the conference championship meet in February in Federal Way, Wash., and four sports adding titles in the spring.
Both men's and women's golf won their Pac-12 crowns on the same day in two different states with the women earning a one-stroke victory in Pullman, Wash. while the men, playing in Corvallis, Ore., birdied a playoff hole to earn the first title in the history of the Cal program. The No. 1-ranked Cal softball team clinched the outright Pac-12 championship in the friendly confines of Levine-Fricke Field in front of the hometown crowd the day before the women's crew team earned the win up north near Sacramento.
The Golden Bears' six titles are two more than Cal teams have won in any other athletic competition season. The Bears have won four conference titles in a single year eight times, with six of those seasons (2002-03, 2003-04, 2004-05, 2006-07, 2008-09, and 2010-11) coming in the last decade. The Bears also won four conference titles in 1959-60 and 1993-94.
