Horizons Fall 2015

Since becoming NSU’s athletic director, Michael Mominey has helped make numerous changes in the Sharks’ program. • NSU joined the Sunshine State Conference in 2004. • In 2005, NSU switched mascots from Knights to Sharks. • NSU has added seven sports under Mominey: men’s and women’s track, men’s and women’s swimming, men’s cross country, women’s tennis, and women’s rowing. The Sharks now have 7 men’s sports and 10 women’s sports. Mominey has explored the possibility of adding sports such as men’s tennis, men’s volleyball, and men’s and women’s lacrosse. • The athletic program has grown from 150 student- athletes to 370. The list of full-time staffers has grown from 23 to 47, with 19 graduate assistants. • NSU started its own hall of fame and a student-athlete alumni association. • NSU created the Shark Booster Club and an athletic advisory council. • NSU has added the Arena at the Don Taft University Center, the NSU Aquatics Center, the Shark Athletic Academic Center, a 5,300-square-foot weight room, and a new athletics department office. In addition, the base- ball, soccer, and softball fields were renovated. All those improvements have contributed to more wins and more championships. Out of 306 Division II programs in the nation, this year, NSU finished 14th as an overall rating for all sports (Learfield Directors Cup). “Six or seven years ago, we were not even in the top 100,” Mominey said. “Our aspiration is to be in the top 10 and then the top 5,” he added. “What we’ve already done is remarkable. And the support we’ve had over the years from the board of trustees to the president’s office and everyone on campus plays into the success we’ve had on and off the field.” n Notre Dame football had Rudy, but NSU baseball has Teft Hill. Both men share similar stories—walk-on athletes who overcame obstacles to inspire team- mates. They made the movie Rudy about Rudy Ruettiger, who got a sack on the only play from scrimmage of his short college football career. While there is no film yet planned for Hill, his accomplishments this year—which included two pinch-hit homers on the same day—may be even more remarkable. When he was only four months old, the Colorado native was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, an uncommon form of liver cancer that usually occurs in children younger than the age of three. Hill endured six months of intense chemotherapy to shrink the tumor and then an eight-hour surgery to remove it, followed by five days in the intensive care unit. Hill never complains about the surgery that left him with a foot-long scar across his stomach. “After my surgeries, it could have gone either way,” said Hill, 21. “I was fortunate to have overcome the battle. There are a lot of people who are less fortunate than me, and that’s why I go out each day and give it my best,” said the business administration major, who has a 3.75 grade point average and is expected to graduate in December 2015. “Teft lives every day to the fullest,” said NSU shortstop Dylan Woods, a sophomore majoring in business administration. It was that attitude that convinced Greg Brown, M.B.A., NSU’s head baseball coach to give Hill a chance to walk on to the baseball team. “He was relentless,” Brown said, recalling how Hill, in essence, recruited NSU during a trip to the university with his father, Rick, instead of the other way around. “He wanted to be with us, and I believed in him from the start. It was the person, not his skills. He just had that ‘it factor’—confidence, a presence. You just knew he was going to be successful.” Hill made the team as a redshirt freshman (a player on the team who practices for a year, but does not play in any official games) in 2014. This year, Hill was the catalyst for the greatest season in NSU baseball history, helping the Sharks to a 39-13 record, their first Sunshine State Conference title, and a berth in the NCAA Division II regional playoffs. The team’s season-long mantra was “37 Hearts, 1 Beat,” or, on Twitter, #37H1B. Coincidentally, Hill wears No. 37, and he is known as the “pulse” of the team, according to Brown. “It wasn’t until halfway through the season that we realized that our motto and his jersey number both shared the number 37,” Brown said. “It was organic and cosmic—and I was in awe of how that worked out.” n BY WALTER VILLA Baseball Player Is the Heart of NSU Team 43 NSU HORIZONS