5050

School-record pins in the career of Bill Holsinger (1999-2002). Holsinger is the Mules’ all-time winningest wrestler by a wide margin, with a record of 118-28. He set school records for wins (37) and pins (15) in a season in 2000-01 and was a three-time Centennial Conference champion and NCAA qualifier.

5050Years in between conference winners in the javelin for the men’s track and field team. When Jim Hayes took first at the 2000 Centennial Conference Championships, he was the Mules’ first gold medal winner in the jav since 1950. Hayes would go on to win three straight conference titles, break the school record in the javelin and, in 2002, become the first Muhlenberg male athlete to participate in the NCAA Championships in a field event.

4949Long field goal kicked by Chris Reed in his spectacular 2002 season. Reed booted two field goals of 49 yards en route to leading Division III with 16 field goals (seven of 40 yards or longer). He set seven school records during the year and was named a first-team All-American – a first for a Mule placekicker.

48-1248-12Score of 2004 wrestling match against Maritime in which the Mules tied an old school record with seven pins. The standard was set on Jan. 17, 1947, against Brooklyn Polytechnic. Four of the pins came in the first period, including one by 149-pounder Dale Mills, who would go on to win the first of his two Centennial Conference championships that year.

4747Consecutive games scoring a goal for Sara Hiller (2006-09). The streak, one of the longest in Division III women’s lacrosse history, spanned all four years of Hiller’s career. Six other Muhlenberg players scored more goals than Hiller, but none had a streak longer than 29 games.

All-Americans during the last 10 years, representing 13 different sports.

4646Among them were Meghan Courtney (2004-07), the first All-American in Muhlenberg women’s basketball history, and John Schoeller (1997-2000), an offensive lineman who was one of a record three All-Americans for the 2000 football team.

46-1046-10Record of the women’s tennis team from 2002 to 2005, including a 36-4 mark in the Centennial Conference. The Mules won a school-record 12 matches in three of the four seasons, won their first two CC titles in 2002 and 2004 and made their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 2005. Emily Oster, the lone member of the women’s tennis Class of 2005, holds the school record with 45 doubles wins in spring dual matches.

4545Extra points attempted without a miss by Michael Katz in 2008. No other kicker in Division III was perfect on PATs with that many attempts, and no other Centennial Conference kicker ever had a better perfect season. Katz eventually ran his string to a school-record 53 straight extra points.

4444

Football number worn by two-sport star Tyler Cathey (1999-2002).

In wrestling, Cathey was a four-time Centennial Conference champion and NCAA qualifier at heavyweight. His final career record of 66-14 included a 50-4 mark in dual meets. He won the 2002 Chris Clifford Award for the most career points in CC tournament bouts.

In football, Cathey was a two-time All-Centennial Conference defensive lineman.

4343

Margin of victory in back-to-back drought-breaking football wins against McDaniel. The Mules had not defeated the Green Terror in 13 years before posting a 43-0 win at home in 2007. Two-time first-team All-Centennial Conference defensive end Chris Musselman and his teammates allowed only four first downs and 100 total yards. The following year, the Mules scored their first win in Westminster since 1988, prevailing by a 49-6 count.

Passes defended in the career of All-America defensive back Mike Burke (1997-2000). Burke set a school record (since tied) with 26 pass breakups and picked off 16 passes (one short of the school record). In 2000, he recorded nine interceptions to tie a 58-year-old school record and received third-team All-America honors.

4242

41-041-0Score of football win against Gettysburg three years in a row. The Mules had given up 539 yards in a 42-28 loss to the Bullets in 1999 before turning their defense around to win 41-0 in 2000 – their first shutout of Gettysburg since 1984. Muhlenberg won by the exact same score the next two years, an oddity made possible by a missed extra point in the middle game. It was the first time the Mules shut out the same team three straight years since they blanked Albright from 1946 to 1948.

Justin Jones helmed the last two wins, rushing for three touchdowns in 2001 and adding two more TDs in the 2002 game en route to being named Centennial Conference offensive player of the year.

4141Centennial Conference-record stolen bases by Justin Graf in his senior year of 2003. Graf swiped six bases against King’s in the fifth game of the season and never slowed down, shattering the previous school record of 27 in a season. He finished sixth in Division III in stolen bases per game. Graf also hit .360, set school records (since broken) for doubles and runs scored in a season and was named to the all-region second team – the first Mule baseball player so honored.

4040Approximate area, in thousands of square feet, of the three-level addition to the Life Sports Center, which opened in August 2004.

Featuring a new main entrance facing the campus and expanded weight room and cardio-fitness areas that offer spectacular views of Scotty Wood Stadium, the addition has been a great benefit to Mule athletes and all members of the Muhlenberg community.

39-1039-10Game-ending run for the men’s basketball team at Franklin & Marshall in a 2001 Centennial Conference semifinal game. The Mules trailed 48-37 eight minutes into the second half before their stunning surge, which resulted in a 76-58 win. F&M was the defending CC champion and had been to the “Final Four” the previous year.

The result snapped the Diplomats’ 21-game home winning streak and put Muhlenberg in the CC championship game, where it lost to Gettysburg. Michael Barletta scored 12 of his game-high 21 points in the big run.

3838Wins vs. nationally ranked opponents for Mule teams in the decade. Not all of these were upsets – sometimes Muhlenberg was ranked higher – but most were.

Baseball (3) beat No. 8 Johns Hopkins in 2002, No. 21 Johns Hopkins in 2005 and No. 9 Johns Hopkins in 2008.

Women’s Basketball (6) beat No. 25 Springfield and No. 9 Scranton 2001-02, No. 19 Moravian in 2005-06, No. 14 DeSales and No. 17 Bowdoin in 2008-09 and No. 23 Moravian in 2009-10.

Field Hockey (7) beat No. 11 Western Maryland in 2001, No. 20 Johns Hopkins in 2002, No. 9 Montclair State and No. 19 Susquehanna in 2003, No. 19 Gettysburg in 2007, No. 6 Johns Hopkins in 2008 and No. 10 Johns Hopkins in 2009.

Football (4) beat No. 26 Johns Hopkins in 2002, No. 13 Johns Hopkins in 2003, No. 10 Salisbury in 2007 and No. 22 Union in 2009.

Women’s Lacrosse (1) beat No. 18 Drew in 2006.

Women’s Soccer (3) beat No. 9 Messiah in 2000 and No. 7 Johns Hopkins and No. 16 Swarthmore in 2009.

Men’s Soccer (5) beat No. 16 Macalester in 2002, No. 8 Johns Hopkins in 2003, No. 9 Johns Hopkins in 2005, No. 7 New Jersey in 2007 and No. 10 Dickinson in 2009.

Softball (4) beat No. 3 Bridgewater State and No. 16 Ursinus in 2000, No. 21 Moravian in 2002 and No. 2 Wartburg in 2008.

Women’s Tennis (3) beat No. 21 Swarthmore in 2002, No. 17 Salisbury in 2003 and No. 16 Swarthmore in 2004.

Wrestling (2) beat No. 25 McDaniel in 2002-03 and No. 26 Messiah in 2007-08.

The listed ranking is the highest national ranking at the time of the game. Softball defeated the highest-ranked team (No. 2 Wartburg in 2008), although baseball’s big win that spring came against a Johns Hopkins team that came within one strike of winning the national championship.

3737 Points scored by Ryan Bonda in a thrilling 108-101 double-overtime win for the men’s basketball team at Widener in January 2003. Bonda hit a three-pointer with four seconds left in regulation to help force overtime, then nailed another trey with 3.6 seconds left in the first overtime to force a second extra period. He scored six of the Mules’ 11 points in the second overtime and finished the game 7-of-10 from three-point range.

The win was the only one for either Muhlenberg basketball team in a multiple-overtime game in the decade. The men played two triple-OT games but lost both.

3636School-record goals scored by Kyle Farris in his senior season of 2008. Farris broke the previous record of 29, set in 1974 in the first run of men’s lacrosse at Muhlenberg, and finished his career with school records for career goals (101) and hat tricks (18). He was named to the All-Centennial Conference first team and earned All-America honorable mention in 2008.

3535

Score for the men’s cross country team at the 2002 Centennial Conference Championships, by far the best in program history. The team’s previous best was 105 points the year before, and its best since is 56 in 2006. The Mules finished second to 10th-ranked Haverford by only 11 points in what remains the closest race for the CC title.

Muhlenberg’s top five runners all placed in the top 12, including Rob Uniszkiewicz in fifth place. Uniszkiewicz would go on to place 15th at the Mideast Regional to qualify for the NCAA Championships.

3434Combined points (13), rebounds (11) and assists (10) for Kelly McKeon at Ursinus in 2009 – the second triple-double in Muhlenberg women’s basketball history. McKeon had three assists and a rebound in the last 50 seconds alone as the Mules closed on an 8-0 run to pull out a 68-65 win in a game in which they trailed by 15 points late in the first half.

The outstanding performance was one of several in the clutch for McKeon in 2008-09. She averaged 16.3 points, 10.0 rebounds and 5.7 assists in the season’s last nine games, including two in the Centennial Conference playoffs and three in the NCAA Tournament.