SEMO fans, enjoy this moment, because few colleges ever reach this point

There rarely is a shortage of negativity in the daily news cycles, and intercollegiate athletics is never immune to such.

Whether it be basketball players getting arrested for theft or a baseball coach allegedly gambling on his own team, recent weeks have brought disappointment to certain fan bases throughout the mid-South.

And then there is Southeast Missouri State.

“If there is something that you want to be a part of,” SEMO Assistant Director of Athletics for Student Support Services/Senior Woman Administrator Betsy Wilcox said, “a winning tradition, not just in the classroom, but also on the field, (and you’re not considering SEMO), then I don’t know what you are looking for.”

Redhawk Nation, embrace what your favorite college athletic department is achieving right now because this stuff doesn’t happen everywhere. In fact, I’m not sure where it happens aside from Cape Girardeau.

The Redhawks were the recent recipients of the Ohio Valley Conference Commissioner’s Cup (honoring the most successful athletic department in the conference) for the second time in three years, and it very well might have been three in four years, if not for a cancellation of the competition due to COVID.

“I can’t even describe it,” Wilcox said of being a part of the athletic department. “It’s hard to put into words just how wonderful it feels to be a part of Redhawk Nation.”

SEMO won OVC championships in football (regular-season), women’s indoor track and field, women’s outdoor track and field, men’s outdoor track and field, men’s basketball (tournament), softball (regular-season), and women’s tennis (regular-season and tournament).

For those that have walked the journey to the top of the OVC mountain, it has been an arduous task to get here. Though, it may not seem so difficult for those who haven’t followed Redhawk athletics closely.

“From the outside,” 10th-year Redhawk football coach Tom Matukewicz said of the athletic department’s success overall, “when I first took the job, you thought that there was no reason (SEMO) shouldn’t be good.

“Now, when you got in the system, then you realized why we haven’t won.”

The fans will see the success of the Redhawk athletes and think the success came due to the performance of the athletes and coaches, but like the role that Wilcox and her academic support team played, Matukewicz said there are a lot of people behind the scenes who contributed to where SEMO Athletics stands today.

“Through a lot of people’s hard work,” Matukewicz said, “we solved a lot of those problems and are able to enjoy the fruits of all of that labor.”

Matukewicz explained that it, first and foremost, takes “alignment.”

“You have to have alignment from the Board to the President, to the Athletic Director, to the coaches, to the players,” Matukewicz continued. “There has to be great alignment throughout. And, of course, there are the fans, and the alumni, and students, and all of the things that go along with supporting an endeavor like college athletics.”

What separates SEMO from almost every other college athletic department in the country isn’t ONLY its success on the fields of competition, but in the classroom, as well.

During the spring semester, a dozen athletic programs at SEMO had team grade point averages over 3.0/4.0.

“Something that we focus on is taking an approach of love and respect for the athletes,” Wilcox said. “When you show that you care about them, I think that they, in turn, will do the same.”

Matukewicz’s program registered a 3.05 GPA, which was the highest in program history, while the women's cross country team (3.84) did the same.

“This is about asking them to not settle,” Matukewicz said of the academic end of the equation. “To push themselves to do things that they don’t want to do, at a high level.

“It’s hard.”

In addition to football and women’s cross country, the Redhawk women's tennis (3.81), women's soccer (3.74), women's gymnastics (3.72), men's cross country (3.69), women's track and field (3.50), softball (3.50), men's track and field (3.45), volleyball (3.27), women's basketball (3.19) and baseball (3.10) all achieved great marks.

As an Athletics Department, the Redhawk student-athletes finished the spring semester with a 3.34 GPA and, for the year, accumulated a 3.35.

“To see the excitement around (SEMO Athletics) in the last five years,” Wilcox said, “it has just grown. We believe in (Athletic Director) Brady Barke’s vision for SEMO Athletics, and it has obviously taken us to new heights.

“If we have gotten this far, in just a couple of years, I can not imagine where we’ll be a couple of years from now, and that is what makes it so exciting to be a part of.”