MEAN GREEN CHAMPIONS

Above and Beyond

Mean Green Athletics scored high on the court, on the feld — and in the classroom. Several teams won multiple conference championships and our student-athletes will be spreading their wings further in 2023 when UNT joins the American Athletic Conference, providing greater national exposure for UNT. While the women’s softball team won the 2022 Conference USA Championship and earned its frst postseason victories, reaching the NCAA Regional Championship, the men’s and women’s basketball teams both set records. The men’s team won the Conference USA West Division Championship and a frst-ever berth in the National Invitation Tournament. The women’s team made it to the semi-fnals of the Conference USA Championship and won a slot in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament. Also, the women’s golf team won its second consecutive Conference USA Championship and it participated in the NCAA Regional. The Mean Green football team attended the Frisco Bowl against Boise State, and the 42-member North Texas Cheer team won back-to-back championships from the National Cheerleaders Association in Daytona Beach, Florida. Alumna and former track member Kellie Delka (’11) participated in the Winter Olympics in the skeleton competition, representing Puerto Rico.

RECORD-SETTING SEMESTER GPA

Student-athletes proved their academic prowess. Eleven Mean Green teams boasted GPAs over 3.0 and they scored an overall 3.206, recording the highest GPA in UNT Athletics history.

Unity Plaza Honors Trailblazers

Alumni Abner Haynes and Dr. Leon King (’62, ’72 M.Ed.), who were the frst Black players to play football at a four-year Texas institution in the 1950s, were recognized this fall with Unity Plaza, an area near the UNT Athletic Center.

Drugs From Fungi

“Fungi make very small, specialized molecules, such as penicillin, which can be used as important drugs.”

— Elizabeth Skellam, assistant professor in UNT’s BioDiscovery Institute whose team received a $1.4 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation to study the possibility of making drugs like penicillin from fungi that live in plants