By Stan Caldwell
stanmansportsfan.com
HATTIESBURG – Maybe the best-kept secret in Mississippi athletics is operating right down the road in Hattiesburg, on the ever-expanding campus of William Carey University.
And like a well-oiled machine, the Crusader athletic program just keeps humming along atop the Southern States Athletic Conference.
This week, the SSAC announced that WCU has won the SSAC Commissioner’s Cup for the 2021-22 school year. It is the seventh time the school has earned the honor since joining the conference in 2010 and the sixth straight time it has been so recognized.
Now it’s time for the rest of the world to get clued in on what the SSAC has come to learn the past dozen years. Carey is pretty good at athletics.
“We have had a great run the past eight years or so, but not many people know about us,” said D.J. Pulley, director of athletics at WCU. “We’ve got national titles, runner-up finishes, a whole bunch of SSAC championships and lots of All-Americas.
“Plus, we’re graduating 80 percent of our athletes, and for those who stay to complete their eligibility, it’s close to 100 percent. Plus, we’ve had a bunch on All-Scholar teams, all while dealing with a tornado and a pandemic.”
Carey would probably be looking at seven consecutive Cups, but the SSAC did not give out the award in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now that things are somewhat back to normal, the Crusaders won the 2021-22 Overall Award by a comfortable 14.87 point margin over runner-up Loyola-New Orleans.
The Crusader women also won the Women’s Award by a similar margin over Loyola, and the men finished second for the Men’s Award, by a mere 1.11 points to Faulkner.
The SSAC uses a scoring formula that evaluates the percentage of potential points earned by each school in the sports it sponsors, and bonus points are awarded for sports sponsored and conference tournament titles won.
For sports that have standings, the final regular season standings are used, then a team gets a bonus point for winning the tournament. For sports that do not have regular season standings, such as golf, cross country or track and field, the finish at the championship is used.
In 2021-22, the SSAC offered championships in 17 sports, and Carey finished first in six, winning in men’s cross country, women’s soccer, women’s indoor track, men’s outdoor track, men’s tennis and women’s tennis.
In addition, the Crusaders picked up bonus points for winning conference tournaments in men’s and women’s soccer, baseball and men’s tennis.
Pulley attributes this success to the quality of coaches, many of whom have been around for decades.
“I think we have the best coaching staff in college athletics,” said Pulley. “Most of us have been together for more than 10 years now, and that continuity and stability on the staff is why we are successful.”
Indeed, the longevity on the Carey athletic staff is quite remarkable. Steve Knight has coached the Crusader men’s basketball team for 40 seasons, baseball coach Bobby Halford has guided the Crusaders for 37 years, women’s basketball coach Tracy English has 32 seasons at the helm, women’s soccer coach Danny Owens just finished his 17th season and golf coach Jeff Mixon and track coach Blake Hegstrom each have 10 years under their belt.
In addition, baseball assistant coach Ben Smith has served the Crusaders for 14 seasons, men’s basketball assistant Eric Burt has been at Carey for 10 years, and softball head coach Craig Fletcher and assistant coach Rodney Williams each have eight years with the program.
That stability, though, means that the school faces some key personnel turnover in the near future. However, Halford believes the nature of the program now will make any transition smoother.
“We’re year-to-year anyway, and that’s the way I’ve always operated,” said Halford. “We’re trying to find players that best fit our school, that fit the way we do things. That won’t change.”
Pulley himself has been at Carey since arriving as a junior to join the Crusaders golf team in 2000 after two seasons at Pearl River Community College. He served as golf coach, sports information director and assistant basketball coach before assuming the job of athletic director in 2016.
“Our goals are simple,” Pulley said. “We want to provide the best experience possible for our student-athletes, so they can succeed on the field, in the classroom and in life.
“We graduate 80 percent of our athletes, and our program GPA was 3.25. That is something that we are extremely proud of.”
Pulley took over the AD’s job from Knight, who held the position from 1987 to 2016. It was under Knight’s tenure that Carey made the critical decision to switch from the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference to the SSAC.
“When the NAIA switched from districts to conferences, you qualified for nationals by winning your league,” said Knight. “Then, all of a sudden, there weren’t enough conferences, so they started added at-large (bids for national tournaments).
“That worked fine for sports like basketball or baseball, but many of our other sports did not have direct qualification to nationals through the conference.”
Knight said the NAIA only allowed teams to qualify for national tournaments through their conference if their league sponsored at least six sports. Otherwise, teams had to compete in affiliated conference tournaments for a spot in postseason.
That worked if your team was good enough, which was indeed the case for the Crusader soccer programs in the mid-2000s.
“We were winning the Gulf Coast and going to nationals back then,” said Owens. “I just think the Southern States; it’s a much stronger conference, so you have to build your team around winning the conference to be stronger nationally.”
But for sports such as tennis and golf, it was a more arduous process, and Knight said he and other ADs in similar circumstances tried to move the GCAC into adding sports, to no avail.
“I was president of the GCAC for 10 years,” said Knight. “We’d have these bi-annual meetings where we’d keep telling the other schools, ‘you’ve got to add sports.’
“It came to the point where the Southern States was having the same situation, and they came to us, Mobile, Belhaven, Spring Hill and Loyola. That’s five teams in the GCAC all in the same boat. Whether because of finances or whatever, the other schools weren’t interested.”
Knight said ending a 30-year association with the GCAC was painful, but the move has been, “the best thing we’ve ever done for our overall athletic program.
“A lot of people consider it the No. 1 NAIA conference in the country in a lot of sports,” Knight said. “But once we got in and saw the level of competition, we knew we were going to have to up our game.”
Mission accomplished.
Since joining the league in 2010, Carey has won two NAIA national championships, in women’s soccer in 2018 and in men’s indoor track in 2020, finished as runners-up nine times, along with 17 Final Fours and 119 NAIA championship appearances.
The Crusaders have won 44 SSAC championships in a variety of sports, 37 in the last six years in their 12 years as a member.
The Crusaders have been recognized individually for their success as well as program-wide. More than 200 Carey athletes have earned NAIA All-America honors and the program boasts more than 50 SSAC Players of the Year and more than 600 All-SSAC honorees.
More significantly, WCU has had more than 250 NAIA Scholar-Athletes and placed more than 700 of its athletes on SSAC All-Academic teams.
The key to success has been a commitment to providing coaches with the tools to succeed. That was a big attraction for volleyball coach Kelsea Weldon, who came to Carey to build a program from scratch after a successful tenure at Oak Grove High School.
In just six seasons, Weldon has built the Crusaders into a serious contender in the SSAC, winning the regular season championship in 2020 and finishing second last fall, which resulted in a second straight NAIA Tournament bid.
“Even though I hadn’t been at the college level (as a coach), I had built a program at Oak Grove,” said Weldon. “I was able to take the experience I had as a player (at Southern Miss) and being from Southern California, and build it to a championship level.”
Following the January, 2017 tornado that damaged much of the campus, the school was able to raise enough funds to build a state-of-the-art volleyball arena, adjacent to the new track that had just opened on County Road, just south of the Larry Kennedy Sports Complex.
“For me, it showed that the college was not just adding a sport, but that they were getting behind it,” said Weldon.
“They were ready to support our program. They expected us to be successful, but they gave us the resources we needed to be successful. Even though it wasn’t built yet, I could bring our first recruiting class in and tell them, ‘we’ve got a building coming.’”
Volleyball is a key example of how the SSAC has propelled Carey athletics into new arenas. The volleyball program was added in 2016, and Weldon has seen the birth of a beach volleyball team that played its first full season in 2022, finishing 19-12 overall.
“It’s been fun pioneering beach volleyball for our conference,” said Weldon. “Right now, we don’t have enough members (in the SSAC) to play beach. However, since we’ve started, Mobile and Loyola have added beach, and we have two or three others that are looking into it.
“I believe once we get to six schools, then we can have beach in our conference. It gives the kids something to look forward to in the spring, and it keeps their skills sharp.”
As yet, Carey does not have a beach volleyball facility, so the Crusaders have played at the new beach arena at Southern Miss.
Adding sports means adding to the potential point total in the Commissioner’s Cup, and every point counts.
“We’re fortunate enough to have reached a point where we’re in the top half of the conference,” said Mixon, who guides both the men and women golfers at Carey.
“Dalton State has been the stalwart of the league, and we’ve been chasing them for a long time. We’ve finished second behind them four of the last five years, so that’s helped us get some points for the Commissioner’s Cup.”
And it also helps at the national level. SSAC teams have won 37 NAIA national championships, seven by the current membership, including the men’s basketball title won by Loyola in March, in which the Wolfpack defeated conference rival Talladega in the finals.
“It’s a very strong conference,” said Mixon. “At the national tournament a few weeks ago, the women from our league finished fourth, fifth and sixth in the team standings. And it’s that way in every sport.”
Mixon also pointed out that the strong competition the SSAC provides in all sports helps draw future Crusaders to the program.
“That’s the way we’re recruiting now,” said Mixon. “Used to, we were getting the first-come, first-served kids, but now we’re more selective about who we recruit, and we sell the competition to them that way.”
And once they get on campus, enjoy their careers and move on, they’ll carry with them life lessons that point the way for success in a number of important fields.
“We have professional athletes, doctors, nurses, lawyers, bankers, coaches, business owners and even college presidents who have worn the red and black,” said Pulley. “It really is a testament to our program and our university.”
SOUTHERN STATES ATHLETIC CONFERENCE
COMMISSIONERS CUP
Final Standings
Overall
- William Carey 97.87
- Loyola-New Orleans 83.00
- Mobile 74.71
- Faulkner 71.49
- Dalton State 71.36
- Middle George State 58.66
- Brewton-Parker 50.27
- Blue Mountain 46.44
- Talladega 42.55
- Stillman 40.81
Women
- William Carey 95.41
- Loyola-New Orleans 82.36
- Dalton State 80.38
- Mobile 70.77
- Middle Georgia State 56.08
- Faulkner 55.85
- Brewton-Parker 48.64
- Blue Mountain 45.68
- Talladega 38.42
- Stillman 33.35
Men
- Faulkner 86.29
- William Carey 85.18
- Loyola-New Orleans 74.21
- Mobile 67.64
- Middle Georgia State 56.88
- Dalton State 56.00
- Stillman 46.45
- Brewton-Parker 44.67
- Talladega 43.86
- Blue Mountain 36.73
