BGSU Centennial Sport Blog: Women's Volleyball and Men's Golf (11:30 Class)

When our group heard about the Centennial Project that was assigned, we really did not know what to expect. We all knew that Bowling Green State University was in its’ 100th year. The project sounded like a nice idea to celebrate this, but it also sounded very overwhelming and also a bit stressful. When draft day rolled along, our group received the last pick in the first round and the first pick in the second round. We decided to select Volleyball as our women’s sport and Men’s Golf as our men’s sport. We believed that these two sports were the least complicated of the remaining sports.

When it came time to find all the volleyball information, we found that there was a ton of information out there about the sport. We mostly found all of our information in yearbooks and the 2009 media guide that was available online. Our group found that varsity volleyball started at BGSU in 1976.* From 1976 through 2008, the volleyball team has put up a record of 560-429-3. An interesting fact that we found about the volleyball team is that there have only been three head coaches for women’s volleyball. The most distinguished is current coach, Denise Van De Walle. Coach Van De Walle (below) is the winningest coach in conference history and also ranks among the top 30 active coaches with over 500 wins.

Although the information for volleyball was pretty easily found, men’s golf was another story. Our group had a very hard time finding out all the information we needed on the sport. We went to the archives, looked at yearbooks, and also looked at the media guide. Men’s golf has been at Bowling Green State University since 1930; however, there has not always been a team every year. From 1930 to 1946, there was not a team during fifteen of those years. Garry Winger (below) is the current head coach of the golf team. Winger has had the head coach title since 1997.

One of the significant players we found was Mike McCullough (below). McCullough was a PGA Tour golfer and currently is on the Champions Tour.

*Note: While some available information suggests that Volleyball started in the 1970s, the evidence found by Dr. Janet Parks and Ann Bowers indicates that it began in 1965.