The Ripon softball team dropped its first-ever NCAA Tournament game on Thursday, May 8, as the team fell to St. Thomas 8-0 in six innings at Carson Park on the UW-Eau Claire campus in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Ripon will face Illinois Wesleyan (29-10) at noon on Friday, May 9 in the Eau Claire Regional.

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The 2008 Midwest Conference Baseball Championship Tournament finally found a home. The event, which is slated for Friday and Saturday, May 9-10 will be held on the campus of host Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, while two contests will also be played in nearby Monmouth. With the MWC South champion up in the rotation to host in 2008, South schools Grinnell, Illinois College, Knox and Monmouth all posted 6-6 league records, prompting all four teams to play a single-elimination playoff tourney to decide the qualifiers and host. Knox emerged as the South champ for the first since 1986 with a pair of playoff wins, while Monmouth qualified as the No. 2 seed. Ripon and St. Norbert had long since punched their tickets to the league tourney from the North, but met Sunday as the South Playoffs unfolded to decide their seeds for this weekend. The Green Knights emerged as the North champion for the second straight season, taking three-of-four from the nationally ranked Red Hawks. Despite their regular-season setback, Bob Gillespie’s (right) Ripon squad still remains the team to beat, as the Red Hawks have rattled off four consecutive league championships and won eight of the last ten.

2008 MWC Championship Preview

The 86th edition of the Midwest Conference’s oldest competition will unfold on Friday and Saturday, May 9-10 when Knox College hosts the 2008 Midwest Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships on its campus in Galesburg, Illinois. The first MWC men’s outdoor track & field championships were contested in 1921 and the event has run every season since, minus war exceptions in 1944 and 1945. Monmouth remains the standard in the conference, as the Fighting Scot men and women have combined to win 21 of the 26 track titles contested since 1995. Roger Haynes’ (right) Monmouth men boast the past two NCAA National Champion pole vaulters in 2008 after senior Peter Sprecher won the event at the 2007 outdoor meet and senior Jonny Henkins topped the field at the 2008 indoor nationals.

2008 MWC Championship Preview

Mike Barthelmess (right) will stay on at Lawrence as the head baseball coach and assistant football coach, Direc tor of Athletics Robert Beeman announced Tuesday (May 7).

A native of Wes ton, Conn., Barthelmess joined the staff as the interim head baseball coach in September 2007 and was chosen to lead the baseball program after a national search.

Barthelmess has head coaching experience in both baseball and football at the NCAA Division III level. A 1983 graduate of Principia College, Barthelmess served as the head baseball coach at his alma mater from 2001-04. He also led the Panthers football program for nine seasons in two different stints. Barthelmess coached the Principia football team from 1990-95 and again from 2003-06.

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