Looking Ahead to 2009-10

General Shale Brick Atlantic Sun Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships will be hosted by Mercer and held at the University Center March 3-6, 2010. This will be the first of a two-year contract to host the tournament.

golf Many of the nation’s top 25 men’s golf programs will come to Macon in October to participate in the third annual Brickyard Collegiate Golf Championships, hosted by Mercer, and played at the Brickyard at Riverside. The field includes Michigan, Penn State, Georgia, Augusta State, Virginia Tech, FSU, Clemson, Ole Miss, UT Chattanooga, Virginia Commonwealth, UNC Charlotte, North Florida, Georgia Tech, LSU
and Mercer.

Golf The women’s golf team will host the second annual “Eat A Peach” tournament at Idle Hour Country Club in October. That field includes Georgia, Florida, Miami, Georgia State, Central Florida, Furman, UT Chattanooga, Augusta State, James Madison, High Point and Kennesaw State.

Soccer The defending A-Sun champion Mercer women’s soccer team will play matches against Vanderbilt, Georgia and Indiana. The game with Indiana will be played in Macon on Sunday, Sept. 6.

The women’s basketball team will play games against five teams that participated in post-season play following the 2008-09 season. They are Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and East Tennessee, who were in the NCAA field of 64, and Florida Gulf Coast, which played in the WNIT.

2008-2009 Mercer Bears Highlights

	Women’s soccer team won its first Atlantic Sun Conference regular season championship with Heather Manting being named conference Defensive Player of the Year; Olivia Tucker, Freshman of the Year; and Grant Serafy, Coach of the Year, for the second consecutive season.
	Volleyball coach Noelle Rooke was named the Atlantic Sun Conference Coach of the Year. Rooke led Mercer to an 18-11 record. It marked the Bears’ first winning record since the 1996 season and represented the fourth-most wins in a season since the program started in 1985.
	Mercer men’s golf hosted the 2008 Brickyard Collegiate Championship in Macon and the Linger Longer Invitational in Greensboro with both events featuring some of the premier collegiate golf programs in the country.
	Women’s basketball, under second-year head coach Janell Jones, won 17 games, the most wins since the 1991-92 team finished at 20-8.
	The baseball team defeated then sixth-ranked Ole Miss in Mobile, Ala., during the early part of the 2009 season and advanced to the Atlantic Sun Conference Championship.
	The softball team set a school record with 40 wins, ranked as the top defensive team in the NCAA for much of the 2009 season and advanced to the Atlantic Sun Conference Championship game.
	The men’s golf team was ranked as high as 78th nationally and had its best conference finish (3rd) since the 1993-94 season. For the first time ever, Mercer had two first-team All-Conference golfers in Ryan Blackburn and Bill Jones. Jones also became the first Mercer golfer ever invited to the NCAA Regional Tournament.
	Mercer had three teams – baseball, men’s cross country and women’s tennis – to be recognized by the NCAA for its Academic Performance Rate. Only 767 of approximately 6,484 Division I teams, or 11.9%, received this recognition.
	Women’s cross-country runner Jenna Jackson set two Mercer records at the Auburn War Eagle Spring Invitational. She ran a 12.91 in the 100 meters and a 26.8 in the 200-meter dash.
	Men’s basketball team, playing one of the most difficult schedules in the country under first-year head coach Bob Hoffman, upsets Auburn and Alabama on the road three days apart en route to a 17-win season, the most since 2003.
	In November, an overflow crowd at the University Center and thousands more on TV watched the Bears lead Georgia Tech the entire game in regulation before the Yellow Jackets claimed a victory in overtime.