BREAKING: Boustany’s trade protection act makes House cut
June 12, 2015The Top 10 NBA Players of All-Time
June 16, 2015
With summer break in full gear, Nicholls athletics are officially on a break until Aug. 22 – the date that the Colonels’ soccer team kicks off its 2015 season.
With a little time to sit back and reflect, Colonels’ Director of Athletics Rob Bernardi likes where his programs are headed.
The top Nicholls athletic administrator discussed the 2014-15 athletic year with The Times this week, expressing pride and optimism for many things that happened within the program’s 13 varsity sports in the past 12 months.
Bernardi said he’s excited for the future, saying it is as bright as it’s been in many years at the Thibodaux-based four-year university.
“I think the year’s been really good for us,” Bernardi said. “Football struggled and had a tough year, but all across our department, we’re fielding competitive teams and teams that are competing in the truest nature of collegiate sports, which means that we have student-athletes who are performing at a high level in both the classroom and on the playing field. I think we’re doing that, and I think we’ve done a lot of really good things, and we’ve gotten recognition – both teamwide, individually and with some of our coaches. That shows the hard work that’s going on.”
TURNAROUND STORIES MAKE BERNARDI PROUD
Of all the athletic successes that Bernardi mentioned, it’s a slew of comeback stories that make him the most proud.
Academically, Nicholls has risen from the doldrums of the past, and has become an athletic department that is a leader in the Southland Conference.
This is a total 180-degree turnaround from where things stood about a half-decade ago when the Colonels were at the bottom-half of the conference in almost all academic measures with several of the university’s sports in penalty phases of the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate (APR) measures. APR is a metric the NCAA uses to measure athletic performance and graduation rates. If a school’s number isn’t high enough for consecutive years, programs can lose practice time, scholarships, the ability to compete in postseason play or the ultimate – the ability to field a team altogether.
Today, Bernardi said all of Nicholls’ varsity sports pass APR clearance, and the Colonels are thriving in sports where they once struggled – specifically baseball and football, among others.
Bernardi said Nicholls graduated 46 student-athletes in May, and more than half of the university’s 300-plus student-athletes currently field a 3.0 GPA or higher, including 13 who earned a 4.0 and 55 who earned between a 3.5 and a 3.9.
Bernardi said the successes are wide-ranging and aren’t exclusive to any one team within the university. He said the Colonels’ ability to pull out of APR problems is a testament to Nicholls’ coaches, whom he said have cracked down on academics and have pushed players to always strive for a degree.
“Academically, we’re doing just excellent,” Bernardi said. “It’s a great, great thing. We had 12 of our student-athletes who were named to the All-Southland Conference Academic Team, and to me, that’s an honor. I’m so pleased with where we stand. Our kids are working so hard, and the numbers speak for themselves.”
On the field, some pretty impressive things happened, too.
Bernardi applauded the continued successes of Nicholls’ women’s basketball program – a team that once was a Southland laughing stock, but has now risen to earn three-straight winning seasons under prestigious coach DoBee Plaisance.
The Colonels have won more games in the past three seasons (53) than it had in the previous nine years combined – a testament to how far things have come.
“They’re not a perennial favorite in our league,” Bernardi said. “Coach Plaisance has done terrific things with that group.”
Bernardi also applauded the continued successes of Nicholls soccer, baseball, tennis, golf and softball – all of which enjoyed nice years in 2014-15.
The Colonels’ soccer team reached it first postseason play last season, winning a game in the Southland Conference Tournament for the first time in program history under coach Dylan Harrison.
Baseball and softball each enjoyed competitive rides, as well with baseball finishing in the top-half of the Southland with 30-plus victories. Softball reached new levels, winning 25 games in a season for the first time in more than a decade.
In women’s tennis, the Colonels won the regular season Southland Conference Title, and in men’s golf, Nicholls had a competitor win an individual tournament for the first time in several seasons.
“In terms of team success, the other sports, football notwithstanding, did very well,” Bernardi said. “And when you measure where we are today against where we were in a lot of these sports five, 10 or even 15 years ago, I think it’s amazing at some of the progresses that we’ve made.”
WHAT ABOUT FOOTBALL?
Nicholls’ 2014 football season was a wreck – it was the lone sore spot on what was otherwise a pretty successful athletic year at Nicholls.
Bernardi doesn’t sugar coat it. Throughout his 20-minute interview, he described the year as a “nightmare in many respects.”
The Colonels didn’t win a game and weren’t close in most of their attempts.
The turmoil started early when head coach Charlie Stubbs resigned from his post after a 27-10 loss against Henderson State in the third game of the season.
His replacement, journeyman veteran coach Steve Axman provided Nicholls with some energy, but the Colonels still couldn’t find the winner’s circle, posting a winless 0-12 campaign.
Throughout the regular season, Bernardi said he worked tirelessly to recruit and attract coaching candidates from across the country. He flirted with and was turned down by Ed Orgeron, who opted instead to sit out 2014 before taking over as an assistant at LSU.
But on Nov. 21, 2014, one day after the Colonels closed the season, Bernardi got his man – Norco native and UL-Lafayette assistant coach Tim Rebowe.
Rebowe lands in Thibodaux with rich Nicholls roots. His brother was a great Colonel in the 1970s, and Tim, himself was an assistant coach in the program in the 1990s.
Bernardi said since Nov. 21, there’s a new energy around Nicholls football and things have changed. Both the AD and new head football coach think that times are a-changin’ for Colonels’ football.
“The energy level is at an all-time high within that program,” Bernardi said. “I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we’ve hired the right man for the job. I have no doubt that he’s going to do an excellent job for our team. We’re so excited for the fall.”
“We want to bring the program back to respectability,” Rebowe added. “We have a lot of work to do, and trust me, we’re going to do every bit of that work. But I think when you look back, people are going to be able to say that Nicholls football is a program that makes everyone in our community proud.”
FACILITY UPGRADES SPARK EXCITEMENT, DESPITE THREAT OF CUTS
The Colonels have also been busy with facility renovations in the past year, as well.
Nearly 50-year-old Stopher Gymnasium got a facelift and new locker rooms were made for the men’s basketball team. That project mimicked a similar project that had taken place a few years sooner for the women’s team.
“We got that done, and it was beyond the point where it was needed, because frankly, their facilities were deplorable,” Bernardi said. “There’s new coaches offices, new basketball locker rooms, a new training room and also a new locker room area for volleyball, so we’ve done a lot to Stopher Gym to help those teams out. People won’t recognize that because it’s mostly behind the scenes parts of the building that the public won’t see, but we’ve done a lot in there to clean things up and make things more modern.”
Down the street at Didier Field, work will begin in August to construct a new press-box and concession for Nicholls baseball with a fieldhouse to be constructed after that.
All of the work at the university is being done, despite threats of continued cuts to higher education coming from a state level. Bernardi acknowledged uncertainty in government and budgets, touting that the university has been “cut-stricken” in the past several years.
But instead of worrying about things he can’t control, Bernardi said he’s following the advice of Nicholls President Dr. Bruce Murphy and is looking at the situation in a different light.
Bernardi said the past athletic year was great, even with monetary challenges present. So the future should be the same, as well – as long as student-athletes and coaches focus on today and worry about tomorrow when it arrives.
“We worry about what’s in front of us and not what’s behind us or what can’t be changed,” Bernardi said. “I don’t know what’s going on in Baton Rouge. I can’t control what’s going on in Baton Rouge. But myself and my colleagues can control what’s going on here, and I can say we’re moving forward.”
The Nicholls State University football team didn’t win a single game in the 2014 season – a stressful campaign that saw the Colonels lose head coach Charlie Stubbs mid-season. The football struggles were one of the lone downward points for Nicholls athletics in 2014-15 – a year filled with successes both academically and athletically, according to Director of Athletics Rob Bernardi.
