June 1, 2016
DVC takes 9th in the CCCAA NATYCAA Cup
Diablo Valley finished as the top-ranked athletics program in the Bay Area for the 2015-16 school year.
The Vikings wound up ninth overall in the CCCAA standings with 119.5 points in the National Alliance of Two-Year College Athletic Administrators (NATYCAA) Cup.
DVC Athletic Director Christine Worsley was thrilled that the program excelled in and out of the classroom.
"Our ultimate goal, obviously, for student-athletes is enhancing their experience here at DVC, and that's not just athletically but academically as well," Worsley said. "We are very diligent in tracking our academic accomplishments. For example, our men's water polo team got all-team academic awards for the state. They were the top academic team. We are very proud of that, but this really displays the hard work and the effort that the coaches put in to achieve athletic excellence by all our programs."
Worsley said the school's elite academic and athletic performance "really helps our students move on from here and to the next level."
Impressively, seven Big 8 Conference schools made the top 30 of the NATYCAA Cup rankings, and four made the top 10, also including No. 4 Santa Rosa, No. 7 Sierra, and No. 8 American River.
"It's obvious that we were in the strongest conference in the North," Worsley said. "In the top 25 there's six Big 8 schools. … You've had to really compete at a top level to get to the state level."
In the fall season, the Vikings' men's and women's water polo teams both earned 18.0 points out of a maximum of 20 by advancing to the state Final Four and finishing third. The men beat West Valley 15-9 in the third-place game, and the women concluded with an 11-9 win over San Joaquin Delta.
The resilient women's basketball team earned 14.5 points by advancing to the NorCal Regional final.
In the spring, the Vikings got a big lift from the track and field program, which produced 23.0 points (13 women; 10 men), to go along with men's swimming (15.0), women's swimming (10.0), men's tennis (14.5) and softball (6.5).
Mt. San Antonio College-Walnut, with 169 points, notched its fourth consecutive NATYCAA Cup win.