bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the first meet of the season up in Albuquerque?
Paul Harkins: We thought the weekend went really well. It was an unsecured competition. On the women's side if it was scored we would have been third behind two teams that are ranked in the Top 20, both UNM and UTEP. We had three girls run faster than we've every had anybody run there before, at least since we've been here.

The twins [Courtney and Camille Schultz] finished in the Top 10 and they were running with some very very good competition, All-American types who have been at the national meet. Chelsa McDonnell had a great day, Jenna Padilla had a great day. She had run the course before as a high school senior and probably before that also but she ran 28 seconds faster than she had ever done before. So it was good all around.

On the men's side, the men ran absolutely fantastic. They showed that they've really done their work over the summer. If it was a scored meet, they would have finished second there behind UNM and would have beaten UTEP for what would be the first time in school history which is pretty exciting.

We had four guys run faster than our number one did a year ago and our fifth was a second off of what our number one did a year ago. We had five guys finish under 26 minutes and had five or six more guys run within 30 seconds of that. It was exciting to see where things started off. The guys and girls did a great job.  Continue Reading This Post >>

Hello Aggie fans! Thank you everyone who came to our first home games last week and the UTEP game in El Paso! We had a blast playing in front of everyone and we hope that when September 25 rolls around that everyone will be back for more!

This week has been pretty intense in practice, but there is one thing that I remember vividly that happened a few days ago. The middles were hitting 4’s, the outside set, and coach told them to hit cross-court. They were creaming the ball and it was a blast watching them hit! For one hit, Brynja set Kelsey a great ball and Kelsey hit it down the line. This ball was hammered, but unfortunately our coach Don Flora was standing right where she hit the ball. Kelsey definitely hit Don’s chin in the process, which is what we in volleyball like to call a facial.

We leave for Baton Rouge this week to play Rice, North Carolina, and Louisiana State! It’s going to be a great weekend for us to play against great teams!  Continue Reading This Post >>

Written By: NM State Athletic Dept.

LAS CRUCES - New Mexico State assistant baseball coach, Gary Ward, is once again being inducted as a hall-of-famer. Ward is being inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Hall of Fame, which is being held in Nashville, Tenn., Friday Jan. 7, 2011.

Ward returns to NM State for his seventh year to be an assistant for his son Rocky Ward. He is the hitting coach for the Aggies and brings an extensive amount of experience to the team.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The Aggie volleyball team make it a baker's dozen last night as they swept the Miners for their 13th straight victory in the I-10 series. It was a bit of an odd night statistically as the only player in double-digit kills for either team was Kayleigh Giddens who finished with 15 kills. The Miners actually had more kills in two of the three sets than did the Aggies, 14-12 in set one and 15-10 in set two, however, the Miners committed eight errors in set one and nine errors in set two.

Also, a lot of times when you see a team with somewhat lower kill numbers in a set, the hitting percentage for that team is generally fairly low also (somewhere in the .100s) but not so for the Aggies last night. They hit .393 and .318 respectively in sets one and two. The Aggies were so efficient last night that only two players, Kayleigh Giddens and Rocio Gutierrez, hit under .300 last night. Stephanie Ziegler, Whitney Woods and Kelsey Brennan combined for 19 kills and they had a total of just two attack errors between the three of them.

What it all adds up to is a 3-0 sweep and the Aggies' 13th straight victory over their rivals.

Be sure to check out this week's interview with Aggie head football coach DeWayne Walker. Coach Walker and the rest of the Aggies are preparing for the season opener on Saturday against San Diego State.

Coach Walker gave us a unit-by-unit rundown of the 2010 Aggie football team and we also asked him to give us a couple of players who will quickly become household names for Aggie fans. Check out the interview to find out who those two players are.

Also, be sure to check out video from yesterday's media press conference courtesy of the guys at AggieVision.

On to today's links...  Continue Reading This Post >>

A couple of big point runs by the Aggies resulted in the team's 13th straight victory over their I-10 rivals, the UTEP Miners, on Tuesday night in El Paso. Kayleigh Giddens paced the Aggies with 15 kills and the Aggies committed just 11 attack errors on the night in the victory. "We did a pretty good job from the service line," said head coach Mike Jordan. "We served it fairly tough at times."

The first set saw the Aggies jump out to a quick 3-1 lead before the Miners would tie things up at 3-3. The set would remain tied at 7-7 and then again at 9-9 when the Aggies would go on the first of their two big runs in the match. The Aggies would reel off eight consecutive points behind tough serving by sophomore libero Ellen Miks. The Agies would get a kill by Whitney Woods followed by a block by Stephanie Ziegler and Kelsey Brennan. After a double contact was called on the Miners, Miks would deliver a service ace to put the Aggies up 13-9. A kill by Kayleigh Giddens would force the Miners to call a timeout down 14-9. The timeout wasn't effective as the Aggies continued their point run as back-to-back-to-back hitting errors by UTEP's Jacque Cason and Jeane Horton would give the Aggies a 17-9 lead. The Miners would finally end the Aggies' point run scoring a point off as Ellen Miks was unable to come up with a dig on an attack by Jacque Cason.

The Aggies would score five of the next six points to push their lead out to 12 points at 23-11. The Miners would score four of the next five points to cut the Aggies' lead to 24-15 but a kill by Aggie middle blocker Michelle Kuester would end the set 25-15. The Aggies hit .393 in the set while holding UTEP to a .176 hitting percentage. The Miners committed eight attack errors in the set.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Where do you feel your is heading into week one this year versus where they were heading into week one last year?
DeWayne Walker: I think we have a better football team. I've been preaching that this whole offseason and I'm just really anxious and curious to see how we play against different colored jerseys. I think we've done a good job preparing our football team all through camp. We'll all find out on Saturday exactly where we are.

bc.net: San Diego State already has a game under their belts, what can you do to mitigate that advantage that they might have from that?
DW: You can look at that a couple different ways. They do have a game under their belt so that's one advantage they have over us. They're going to have to adjust to us because I really feel like we are a better football team than Nicholls State. Hopefully that will work to our advantage.

The other piece of it is how well we can respond to San Diego State's talent because we don't have a game under our belts. I think there are going to be pros and cons for both teams. I think the team that adjusts and is able to respond the quickest will obviously have the edge.  Continue Reading This Post >>

The Aggie volleyball team heads to El Paso today to take on the UTEP Miners in round two of the Battle of I-10. Round one went decisively to the Aggies as they won in a sweep. We expect UTEP's Memorial Gym to be rocking tonight as the Miners are hoping to pack the gym with orange to counterbalance the wave of crimson that usually comes down from Las Cruces.

Much like Friday night's match, we expect the Aggie middles to be very successful against the Miner defense. We also expect that the Aggies will be ready for the setter dump from UTEP's Patty Jarmoc, something that Coach Jordan wasn't entirely thrilled with after the match on Friday night. This is the first of four matches the Aggies will play this week as they'll head to Baton Rouge, LA where they'll face No. 21 LSU, Rice and North Carolina.

Tonight's match against UTEP is scheduled for a 7:00 p.m. first serve and can be heard on the radio in Las Cruces on KSNM AM 570 with Kyle Doperalski calling the action. Streaming audio will be available via Aggie Access (subscription required). Live Stats and streaming video will also be available via the UTEP athletic website (live video for a fee).

Be sure to check out our feature on the Aggie cross country program if you didn't visit the site yesterday because of the holiday (which we won't hold against you!)

On to today's links...  Continue Reading This Post >>

As we promised last week, we've got another feature on the Aggie cross country team. On an editorial note, if you read the article earlier today, we had one bit of misinformation in the article which we'd like to point out. The Schultz sisters, Courtney and Camille, are from Cloudcroft, N.M. not Ruidoso, N.M. We apologize for the mixup and thanks to reader David for pointing it out to us. As always, if you have any questions, comments, rants, story leads, etc. that you'd like to share or if you just want to say hello, use the Contact form.

The Aggie soccer team improved to 2-1-2 this season as they tied Northern Arizona yesterday afternoon. The Aggies were inches from pulling out the victory but a shot from Yolanda McMillion was just a little high and hit the crossbar and came back out. Coach Needham was happy with the result, particularly since the Aggies had to play the final 15 minutes of overtime a man down as Nina Yanes received her second yellow card of the game (two yellows = one red) and was sent off the field. We believe that Yanes may be the first Aggie player to receive two yellow cards in a match. We can't remember anyone getting ejected last season on the player side, Coach Needham was ejected halfway through a match in the early part of last season.

Up next for the Aggies is home game against North Dakota on Friday. It's their lone match of the week.

The Aggie football team kicks off their season this Saturday against San Diego State! We'll have more throughout the week on the Aggies' season opener.

On a WAC related note, Boise State takes on Virginia Tech tonight at FedEx Field. Could this be the final season that the WAC has a legitimate shot at a BCS bowl? The chances certainly take a hit after the 2011 season when Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada are all no longer on the WAC schedule.

On to today's links...  Continue Reading This Post >>

A quick scan of the Aggie cross country roster reveals three things, one there are three sets of siblings on the men's and women's teams, the Ruybalid brothers, the Hart brothers and the Schultz sisters. Two, the head coaches Paul and Meaghan Harkins are married. And three, the overwhelming majority of athletes are from in-state.

So what makes such a unique situation possible? Head coach Paul Harkins, who married women's cross country head coach Meaghan Gregory last summer, says it's part genetics, part luck and a lot of hard work. For the Aggies, the family atmosphere starts at the top. "My wife and I are both coaching here and we have a family atmosphere with us [as coaches]."

So aside from a family atmosphere, which is something all teams strive for, how does one cross country program end up with three sets of siblings? "Distance running talent is genetic a lot of the time," says Coach Harkins. "If you get one kid and they have a sibling who is looking up their older brother or older sister, you treat them [the older sibling] well and they're doing good things and they're showing improvement, they [younger sibling] may want to follow them, especially if they're having some success," Harkins explained. Harkins chuckled a bit as he added one caveat, "As long as they have a good relationship with their sibling."  Continue Reading This Post >>