Bruin athletics rank among the best in the countryBy Brent Boyd
Summer Bruin Senior Staff
UCLA athletes improved upon the rich athletic tradition of the school when they were named the second-best athletic department in the country in the Sears Directors' Cup competition.
The competition was established to recognize the most successful athletic department as a whole, rather than just recognizing each individual sport.
The second-place finish is UCLA's highest in the history of the 3-year-old competition organized through the National Association of Collegiate Directors of America (NACDA). Finishing behind only Pacific 10 rival Stanford, the Bruins improved upon two consecutive third-place finishes.
Despite a sluggish start for the Bruins, standing in sixth place throughout the fall and winter quarters, the athletic teams performed extremely well in the spring, allowing the Bruins to overcome Penn State, Michigan, Nebraska and Ohio State en route to their second-place finish.
The men's tennis team earned significant points for the Bruins by reaching the national championship match, while third-place finishes in women's tennis and softball, as well as top 10 rankings for both track and field teams and a near birth in the College World Series for the baseball team all enabled UCLA to jump higher in the standings.
In addition, national championships in men's water polo and volleyball as well as the women's gymnastics team placing second nationally and a fourth-place finish by the women's golf team gave the Bruins some points early on in the competition.
"This is a tremendous achievement for all of UCLA's outstanding student-athletes and coaches and they should all be very proud," Bruin athletic director Peter Dalis said. "Everyone associated with UCLA athletics, including our staff, students, fans and supporters can share in this accomplishment."
The Bruins' first-round loss in the NCAA basketball tournament combined with the fact that points were not gained for football's Aloha Bowl appearance or the national championship earned by the women's water polo team all hurt UCLA's chances at gaining their first ever directors' cup.
The NACDA awards the accomplishments of 22 sports at each university nine core sports for each gender as well as two men and two women wild card sports (women's water polo is not included among the possibilities).
For each sport, there is a 64-point sliding scale (64 points for first, 63 for second, etc.), based solely on postseason performance. The only sport that has a meaningful regular season, in relation to the Director's Cup, is football, where a playoff system does not exist and national rankings determine the final point allotments.
Whereas the Eastern schools are traditionally dominant in the major sports of football and basketball, the NACDA rates all sports equally, and as a result the Western schools, whom usually do better in the less popular sports such as golf, softball, tennis and water polo have dominated the directors' cup rankings over the past three years.
This year, in addition to the top two finishers, the Pac-10 boasted two other top-10 schools with Arizona (seventh) and USC (10th). The only other conference that had more than one university in the top 10 was the Big 10 which had two (Michigan and Penn State). Last year, the Pac-10 placed six of the top 13 finishers, while in 1993-94 five of the top 10 hailed from the conference.