Tuesday, April 30, 1996

Texas Tech enjoying unprecedented athletic success

By MARK BABINECK
Associated Press

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) - When Texas Tech built a new trophy case a few months ago, school officials didn't fathom they could be retiring it this summer.

Flush with two years' worth of unprecedented athletic success, that case might soon become a permanent monument to Tech's triumphs in the waning days of the Southwest Conference.

Two straight football bowls - including the Cotton Bowl - back-to-back SWC championships in men's and women's basketball and improvements virtually program-wide mean the Red Raiders finally believe they've arrived.

Athletic director Bob Bockrath is pleased about what he calls the best overall sports year in school history, but he isn't convinced doing it in the final year of the SWC makes it that much sweeter.

"I don't know that you'd necessarily determine that this year is more important than any other," he said. "Our goal is to achieve in a maximum level at any time. This year we're fortunate to have hit on a lot of cylinders."

The most recent cylinder was men's golf. Tech stormed to a 12-stroke comeback Sunday to win its first SWC title since 1971.

Monday, golf coach Tommy Wilson still clutched the trophy.
"
This piece of hardware sat in my lap on the plane back (from Houston) last night," said Wilson, whose teams had never beaten Texas in any tournament. "I figured if the plane went down, I would go down with the trophy."

Bockrath pointed to golf as an analogy for nearly every Tech sport this year.

"No one thought Texas Tech had any chance to win the SWC championship in golf," he said. "For Tommy and his kids to go out and win the championship and beat Texas is just kind of a phenomenal achievement and probably is kind of symptomatic of our whole sports program."

You know things are going well when the week's biggest disappointment came when the baseball team became the school's first major program to lose at home this season. A loss to Houston snapped a 56-game string contributed to by football and men's and women's basketball.

Coach Larry Hays' team actually won five of six games last week, but these days winning is almost expected on the South Plains, where Tech won SWC titles in all four major sports in 1994-95.

"It just helps your athletes feel like they're part of a whole program," said Hays, who considers football the key to any school that wants to improve its overall performance.

The football team won its first SWC crown two years ago and capped a 9-3 season with a Copper Bowl victory last December.

"Being in the state of Texas, it helps to do well in football because that's what's on everyone's mind," Hays said. "All of it trickles down I think."

Bockrath moved aggressively to upgrade Tech facilities upon his arrival in 1993. The renovated baseball and track stadiums will host the final SWC championships in those sports next month.

He also made huge pay-raise offers for Hays, women's basketball coach Marsha Sharp and men's coach James Dickey. Hays and Sharp already have signed multi-year contracts.

"Success tends to feed on itself," Bockrath said. "When one or more programs are successful, other programs pick up on that and try to achieve to the same levels of excellence."