NCAA National Championship Teams

2004

Baseball

The university’s first NCAA national championship came in 2004, when the baseball team scored a 6-3 victory over top-ranked Eastern Connecticut State University in the championship game of the double-elimination national tournament, capping a 40-10 season.

The Bruins rode the arm of pitcher Scott Hyde – later drafted by the New York Mets – in the finale. He was named a First-Team All-American, National Co-Pitcher of the Year and Most Outstanding Player of the Division III Tournament. Head coach Pat Bailey was named the DIII National Coach of the Year, and shortstop David Peterson earned First-Team All-American recognition.

2009

Women’s Basketball

The 2008-09 women’s basketball team claimed the first NCAA DIII national championship for any women’s program at George Fox after compiling a perfect 32-0 overall record and a 16-0 mark against Northwest Conference opponents.

Coached by Scott Rueck and led by senior Kristen (Shielee) Cromie, the Bruins defeated Washington-St. Louis 60-53 in the title game. Rueck was named the NCAA DIII National Coach of the Year, and Cromie was honored as the NCAA Tournament MVP.

The Bruins outscored their opponents by an average of 19 points per game during the season and became the first women’s DIII basketball team west of the Rocky Mountains to win a title.

2018

Women’s Track & Field

In May of 2018, the women’s track and field team followed in the footsteps of their basketball predecessors, earning a national title at the outdoor championships in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In their case, it was a co-championship, as the Bruins tied UMass Boston for top team honors.

Highlighting the national championship meet was the 4x100 team of Sarah King, Kennedy Taube, Sara Turner and Lis Larsen, whose school-record-time of 45.55 seconds won the competition. King added a fourth-place finish in the 400 meters and a fifth in the 200; Dakota Buhler took third in the long jump and fourth in the triple jump; Stacy Kozlowski claimed third in the high jump; and Annie Wright was second in the heptathlon.

All told, George Fox earned 10 podium finishes during the three-day event.

2023

Women’s Golf

After 12 straight years of qualifying for the NCAA Division III National Golf Championships – and coming up just short of winning it all each time – the George Fox women broke through to win the program’s first-ever national team title in 2023.

Coach MaryJo McCloskey’s squad won the fourth team championship in university history by coming through with one of the best back-nine rounds in program history on the tournament’s final day. Collectively, the Bruins’ four scoring players finished the final nine holes with a composite score of two-under, giving the team a final-round 304 score and a three-day total of 933 to win the event by five strokes over runner-up Washington University of St. Louis.

Liana Brown led the Bruins by finishing seventh individually, while teammates Alison Takamiya (ninth), Makensie Toole (13th), Avery Kageyama (tied for 25th) and Giselle Flint (77th) rounded out the lineup. Kiana Toole and Ainsley Carter joined their teammates on the trip and in the post-round celebration.

2025

STUNT

It didn’t take the university’s STUNT team long to make an impact at the national level. Two years, to be exact.

In winning a national title in the spring of 2025, the squad became the university’s fifth Division III champion since 2000 and its second DIII victor in two years, following the women’s golf team’s 2023 championship run.

After a third-place national finish in its inaugural season in 2024, George Fox’s STUNT team, under program director Reba McClennan and head coach Beth Sanchez, defeated St. Mary of Indiana and Muskingum University of Ohio in the preliminary rounds of the 2025 competition before beating Muskingum again – this time in the national championship – by a score of 9-7. The victory came in the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women classification.