Tiger Athletics

WINTER SPORTS RECAP

Tiger athletics enjoyed highly successful winter and spring seasons, featuring a national champion, national rankings, and many school records – both team and individual. The nationally-ranked women’s basketball team, which held the No. 1 ranking in NCAA Division II for a few weeks, recorded its third 30-win season in eight years. Coach Tony Hobson was named Women’s Four-Year College Coach of the Year by the Kansas Basketball Coaches Association. This honor is Hobson’s 19th coach-of-theyear award in his 30-year career as a collegiate head coach. While these four pages will provide a glimpse of the success of a few Tiger student-athletes, much more can be found about each team at https://fhsuathletics.com.

Men’s basketball

Nyjee Wright closed out a solid career with the Tigers by averaging 11.1 points his senior year. He provided valuable veteran leadership at guard for a team that turned in one of the most exciting seasons in several years. After moving into the starting lineup as a sophomore, the Wichita native missed the first 13 games of his junior year because of injury. He returned to the lineup for the final nine games that season to help FHSU go on a 6-1 run to finish the season at .500. The Tigers then carried that momentum into the 2021-22 season, where they finished 23-6 overall. They placed third in the MIAA standings and dropped a three-point heartbreaker in the semifinals of the MIAA Tournament to eventual national champion Northwest Missouri State. As a senior, Wright led the team in both free throws (.833 percentage) and 3-point shots (.417 percentage). He was also an All-MIAA Honorable Mention selection on the court and a standout in the classroom, earning MIAA scholarathlete honors.

Nyjee Wright

Women’s basketball

Cydney Bergmann bounced back from a serious knee injury her junior year to make a big impact her senior season. One of the team’s top reserves as a sophomore, the 5-foot, 8-inch guard worked her way into the starting lineup her junior year and started 17 straight games before being sidelined with an injury that required surgery. An honor student, Bergmann earned numerous academic awards while maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA, including MIAA scholarathlete recognition. She attributes her success on the court to competing in multiple sports from the time she was a youngster growing up in Concordia. Her first competitive sport was swimming, and she earned all-state honors in three sports (volleyball, basketball, and track) her senior year in high school. Bergmann was a twotime All-MIAA Honorable Mention selection and left FHSU as a member of one of the winningest classes in women’s basketball history (107-17 record).

Cydney Bergmann

Wrestling

A.J. Cooper was a member of both the Tiger football and wrestling teams his first two years at FHSU, then decided to concentrate on wrestling. It proved to be a good move for the southwestern Kansas product from Cimarron. He qualified for nationals his last two seasons in the 285-pound class, earning All-America honors both years with fifth- and seventh-place finishes. He compiled an impressive overall collegiate record of 119-50 at FHSU, including a 33-12 mark his senior season. Cooper cracked the top-10 NCAA D-II national rankings during his final season and earned MIAA Athlete-of-the-Week honors in December after winning FHSU’s Bob Smith Open with a 5-0 performance.

A.J. Cooper

Men’s indoor track

When Ryan Stanley won the 2021 NCAA Division II national outdoor championship in the pole vault with an outdoor school-record height of 17 feet, 2.75 inches, he couldn’t imagine at the time anything better for his athletic career. But it got even better this past winter. The Bennington junior cleared 17- 9.25 at the 2022 indoor finals to win his second national title. That mark broke his own indoor school record and helped earn him USTFCCCA Central Region Indoor Field Athleteof-the-Year honors. He then went on to claim the sixth All-America finish of his decorated career three months later by finishing eighth (with a height of 16-8.75) at the outdoor national meet. Stanley also has numerous academic honors on his long list of accomplishments. He will have a busy senior year in 2022-23 when he serves as FHSU’s student body president and tries to push that All-America count to eight.

Ryan Stanley

Women’s indoor track

A multi-event standout, Mattie Rossi finished fifth in the pentathlon at nationals to win All- America status while breaking her own school mark with 3,766 points. She also placed ninth in the heptathlon at the outdoor national meet. Also, at indoor nationals, the junior from Oak Creek, Colo., claimed secondteam All-America recognition with her 12th-place finish in the 60-meter dash. During the outdoor season, she finished as national runner-up in the 400-meter hurdles, breaking her own school record in the process with a time of 58.11 seconds. She also placed ninth in the heptathlon at that meet. Like numerous Tiger athletes, Rossi also excels in the classroom and has a long list of academic awards to her credit.

Mattie Rossi

SPRING SPORTS RECAP

Softball

Sara Breckbill set many records and earned numerous honors during her five-year career at FHSU. The last one was really special for Breckbill. After gaining an extra year of eligibility because of COVID-19, she received the 2022 National Strength and Conditioning Association All-America Athlete Award. That news came after a super senior season where she led the team in RBIs with 31, tied for the team lead in home runs (7), and tied for the NCAA D-II lead in sacrifice flies (7). Breckbill – from Parker, Colo. – played in a school-record 226 games for the Tigers. Her name appears on numerous FHSU top-10 lists, including No. 1 for career sacrifice flies (11). A three-time All-MIAA pick, Breckbill earned honors on the field as both a catcher and a utility player. Academically she was on the MIAA honor roll five times and named scholar-athlete twice.

Sara Breckbill

Men’s track & field

Nolan Churchman was one of many reasons the Tigers earned recognition in the national rankings throughout the season. The St. George sophomore closed out his second collegiate outdoor season with a fifth-place All-America finish in the decathlon, breaking his own school record in the process with a 7,192-point total. It was the first All-America performance for FHSU in that event during the NCAA D-II era, and it tied for the best-ever national finish for a Tiger multi-event athlete. That effort followed his seventh-place finish in the heptathlon during the national indoor meet. As a team, FHSU was ranked as high as 13th in the national poll during the season.

Nolan Churchman

Women’s track & field

Lyric Holman, the Tigers’ top sprinter, collected her sixth and seventh All-America honors at the outdoor national meet. The Junction City junior helped her team reach a top 10 ranking (ninth) during the season, then earned her way to the podium at nationals with her eighth-place finish in the 100-meter dash (11.96 seconds). She also was a second-time All- American in the 200 meters (12th in the preliminaries with a 23.93-second time). It marked the conclusion to a very successful second semester for Holman, who also earned second-team All- America recognition during the national indoor meet in both those races.

Lyric Holman

Women’s golf

Morgan Brasser completed a busy standout sophomore season by finishing seventh at the Central Regional Championships and just one shot out of qualifying for nationals. She was third among the 27 MIAA conference golfers at this year’s regional meet. She finished with a stroke average of 77.2 this year (fall and spring) and finished in the top 10 in five of the six spring tourneys, including a championship effort in a tournament at St. Joseph, Mo. A nursing major and a four-time state high school medalist from Andale, Brasser earned Honorable Mention All-MIAA honors for a second straight year in 2022. She also earned her second scholar-athlete recognition.

Morgan Brasser

Men’s golf

Bryce Cowan graduated from FHSU with a degree in management this spring and was named to the all-MIAA honor roll four times. He will have one more year of college eligibility remaining, which he will use as he begins work on his master’s this fall. He led the Tigers in scoring for a second straight year in 2021-22 with a stroke average of 76.81. Cowan’s season-low score came during the fall portion of the season with a 3-under 69 at the Tulsa Cup. A former three sport athlete at Topeka-Seaman High School, Cowan played well in the state of Oklahoma this year; he also finished in a tie for eighth at the Hillcat Classic in Owasso, Okla., this spring.

Bryce Cowan

Baseball

The Tiger baseball team struggled through a long season, winning just a handful of games in 2022. Despite that, there were still some standout individual performances along the way. Grant Schmidt, a senior outfielder from Hastings, Neb., closed out his collegiate career with a bang, hitting three home runs in his series against No. 4 nationally-ranked Central Missouri. One of those came in his last at-bat, putting an exclamation mark on a solid two-year career after transferring to FHSU from Cloud County Community College. He led the team in several categories, including home runs (14) and RBIs (51). He tied for the team lead with 12 multi-hit games and drove in a career-best six RBIs in a game against Newman University. He earned All- MIAA honors his junior and senior year and scholar-athlete recognition by the MIAA both years.

Grant Schmidt

Tennis

Irina Alfonso joined a teammate from her own country for the most doubles victories for the Tigers this season. She and Maria Paz Diaz – who both hail from Asuncion, Paraguay – won five doubles matches, including the No. 1 position at the home season finale vs. Missouri Western. Alfonso, a freshman in her first season at FHSU, played No. 1 singles for the Tigers.

Irina Alfonso