The Rebels

Hey hey,

Following on from last week’s post about Football, I’m going to continue on the sport path this week and write a little something about all the other sport programs at Ole Miss, including which ones I’ll be able to watch while I’m there.

As I’ve said plenty of times before, Ole Miss is a very sporty school, hosting teams in 11 different sports (plus 2 more which are non-varsity, meaning they’re not a principal team of the school and therefore are self-funded like extracurricular clubs). All of the Ole Miss teams (regardless of gender) are known as the Rebels and generally wear the school’s colours of Cardinal Red and Navy Blue (however some uniforms, generally away ones, include white, grey and/or pale blue). The Ole Miss mascot is Tony the Landshark, most commonly seen at football games.

Aside from football, basketball is one of Ole Miss’ biggest and most popular sporting programs. Hosting both a men’s and women’s team, it rosters 20-30 players a year between the two teams who each play 30-40 games a season between November and April, most of the time playing 2-3 games per week. For reasons that an hour of my researching could not find the answers to, most of Ole Miss’ men’s games will be played at home this upcoming season, and many of the women’s ones are too. So while I don’t understand the logic behind the scheduling of college basketball, I do know that it’s going to be very possible for me to attend a basketball game in my time away.

The Ole Miss men’s team has been pretty successful over the past few years, where they’ve finished most seasons with a significantly higher amount of wins than losses (last season their final tally was 24-14). The men’s team is actually 1 of 4 teams that has been invited to this year’s National Invitation Tournament in NYC, one of the more prestigious of the many invitational tournaments played over Thanksgiving.

The women’s team has been less successful recently, finishing most of their last few seasons with more losses than wins (last season’s final tally was 9-22).

Ole Miss’ stadium is ‘The Pavilion at Ole Miss’ and has a capacity of 9,500.

Ole Miss has one current active NBA Player, being Terence Davis who plays for the Toronto Raptors.

While my several years of primary school basketball in Australia gave me enough knowledge on the rules of basketball itself, I have tried to learn more about the system and how scheduling, travelling and mid-season and post-season tournaments work. But in all honesty, I have never come across such a complicated, convoluted system that has little-to-no information online explaining it to ‘dummies’ like myself. Other than what I’ve written above, there’s literally nothing else I’m able to explain to you all about college basketball because I simply don’t understand it. Oh well, at least I’ll understand what’s going on at actual games and hope that we end the season with more wins than losses.

Two other popular sports at Ole Miss are baseball and softball. For anyone who may be unaware, baseball is played by men and softball is played by women, but they’re pretty much the same game. At home games, the baseball team plays at the 11,500-capacity Swayze Field and the softball team plays at the Ole Miss Softball Complex, which has a capacity of 1,000.

(Swayze Field)

(Softball Complex)

The NCAA Division I baseball season goes from mid-February to the end of June, so I unfortunately won’t get to see any games during my time at Ole Miss. Of their 68 games this past 2019 season, the Ole Miss team won 41, and of those 68 games, 35 were played at home. In 2019, they played in 3 post-season tournaments. Firstly, they played the SEC tournament against the other schools in their conference, however they lost to Vanderbilt in the final 11-10. Next, they played in the Oxford Regional tournament where they beat Jacksonville State 19-4 in the final. And lastly, they played in the regional championships that qualified teams for the College World Series, which are the finals of the baseball season. As in many seasons past, the SEC had the most members participating in the tournament (10 of their 14 members). Ole Miss were allocated to the Fayetteville Super Regional where they lost in the final to Arkansas and therefore did not progress through to the finals of the College World Series (as only the winner of each of the 8 regionals progresses to the CWS). However, SEC teams made up 4 of the 8 finalists and Vanderbilt, an SEC team, won the tournament. They ended the season ranked an average of 13th in the country up from their previous season ranking average of 21st (rankings are not set by one institution and vary between authorities or media). There are currently 6 Ole Miss alum playing in Major League Baseball, and Ole Miss alum have been first-round MLB draft picks 6 times.

Same as baseball, the NCAA Division I softball season goes from February to June, so again I won’t see any of these games while at Ole Miss. The softball team’s 2019 season was successful, ending the season with a 41-20 tally, and played 30 home games. The Ole Miss team started off the season competing in 4 tournaments (I am unable to determine whether this is the same for everyone else and, if so, whether they all compete in different tournaments). I’m not sure that these tournaments were necessarily significant as I can’t find anything online about there being a winner, but Ole Miss had more wins than losses in 3 out of 4 of these tournaments. The regular season progressed until it came time for end-of-season tournaments, where the softball team played the exact same tournaments that the baseball team did. They first played in the SEC tournament, but lost to Kentucky 8-0 in the Quarterfinals. Secondly, they played the Oxford Regional tournament where the Rebels beat Louisiana in the final 5-4. Finally, they were selected to play in the Tuscon Super Regional in order to gain qualification into the softball College World Series (and again the SEC had the highest level of participation with 13/14 teams qualifying for the regionals), however they lost to Arizona in the final and therefore did not progress to the CWS (which was won by UCLA). Their end-of-season rank was an average of 13th in the country.

Many colleges across America have soccer teams, but most only for women. Ole Miss has a women’s soccer team, and they seem to do relatively well. Last season (2018) the women’s team placed 4th overall in the SEC rankings, and had an overall season tally of 13-6-1 (meaning 13 wins, 6 losses, 1 tie), and they were even invited to the NCAA end-of-season championship. The soccer regular season runs from mid-August to the end of October (so I’ll be there to see some games as they’re playing at least 10 home games this season), with post-season championships held in November. The SEC holds an SEC Championship game (which Ole Miss is yet to win) and the NCAA holds its Women’s Soccer Championship. Qualification to this championship is based on end-of season placement which either automatically qualifies a team or they are invited to join to make the number of competing teams up to 64. Ole Miss were invited last year but were unfortunately knocked out in the second round and therefore did not make it to the final (the ‘College Cup’).

The Ole Miss Soccer Stadium is the home field on campus (shown below).

Like soccer, volleyball is predominantly a women’s sport in American colleges. Ole Miss have a team, and they compete from the end of August through to the end of November, with a post-season NCAA Volleyball Tournament running from the end of November through until mid-December. Last season (2018) the Ole Miss team finished with 14-18 overall, and did not qualify for the NCAA tournament. This upcoming season (which I’ll be there to see) will see the 11-member team play 29 regular season games, 12 of which are at home, including the first 3 games of the season which are part of the ‘Rebel Invitational’ weekend. At home games, the women’s team competes in the Gillom Athletics Performance Center.

(Gillom Athletics Performance Center)

Ole Miss has both a men’s and women’s team for track and field, which has two seasons a year – indoor and outdoor. For the Ole Miss teams in 2019, the indoor season was between January and March (where training started well before Christmas). Since the same students compete in indoor and outdoor season, they then had a few weeks break before outdoor season started in late March, and this season ran through until the end of June. Each season culminates with the NCAA Division I Men’s/Women’s Indoor/Outdoor Track and Field Championships. This year’s Indoor Championships were held between the 8th and 9th of March. Events included varying distance sprints and long-distance running events as well as relays, hurdles, high jump, pole vault, long jump, triple jump, shot put and so on. In men’s, Ole Miss only had competitors in 2 events (mile run and distance medley relay) but did not place in either. There were no Ole Miss students competing in any of the women’s competitions. In the Outdoor Championships held between June 5th and 8th, Ole Miss had competitors in one men’s and one women’s event, but did not place in either. Events are much the same as in the indoor season except that there are usually more track events given that outdoor tracks are generally larger. My assumption is that competitors qualify for such championships by their results during season meets, and Ole Miss doesn’t seem to have as successful a track and field program as other schools.

The Ole Miss team’s home ground is the Ole Miss Track and Field Complex, which I believe only includes outdoor facilities.

Similar to track and field is cross country, which for anybody who doesn’t know is a long-distance running sport where competitors (in either teams or as individuals) run a race, anywhere between 4-12km, on natural terrain (so exactly like high school cross country day where we’d run around the school grounds or local sport reserve). Teams have several meets during the regular season, spanning from September to October, and then compete in conference, regional and national championships over October and November. Last season (2018) the Ole Miss men’s and women’s team both had competitors in the NCAA Championship, and finished 17th and 22nd place respectively as a collective representation of Ole Miss. The men’s and women’s teams combined include over 30 Ole Miss student athletes.

There are both a men’s and women’s team for Golf at Ole Miss, with almost 20 students who compete for the school. The college golf season runs from September through to May, and each meet/tournament runs for anywhere between 1-4 days. Looking at last year’s schedule, it seems that many competitions are invitationals, so it seems as though the length and fullness of a team’s season depends on their previous season’s efforts and therefore how many events they’re invited to in the current season (don’t hold me to this). In the 2018 season, the men’s and women’s teams both placed top 5 in half of the competitions they competed in, both also having one win each (men’s – USF/Ole Miss challenge, women’s – SEC championship match play). This upcoming season’s schedule has not been released yet, but none of the teams’ events last season were held at the Ole Miss golf course, and only one women’s tournament was held in the state of Mississippi. I don’t mind though, since I’m not really a fan of golf haha.

(The Ole Miss Golf Course)

Ole Miss also has a men’s and women’s team in tennis, who at home games play in either the outdoor Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center or in the William F. Galtney Indoor Tennis Center.

The college tennis season runs from September through until mid-April, with post-season tournaments commencing from there through until the end of May. It seems as though games played from September to mid-January are invitationals/championships/tournaments as they all run over several days, whereas games played from mid-January to mid-April are all single-day. Last season, the women’s team ended with 12-12 and played 14 meets/tournaments at home, and the men’s team ended on 16-13 and played at home 14 times. Both teams competed in the end-of-season SEC Championship, where both Ole Miss teams bowed out in the second round. The men also made it to NCAA Regional Championships and the NCAA Individual Championship, but were eliminated in the first and second round respectively.

Last of all, Ole Miss has a women’s rifle team. Rifle is not sponsored by the SEC, so the rifle team competes in the Great American Rifle Conference, where teams of all genders compete against each other and compete against the other 8 teams in the GARC as well as teams from the other 4 rifle conferences. The rifle season starts in late-September and concludes with end-of-season championships in February. The GARC holds its own in-conference championship and as with all the other sports, the NCAA has a Rifle Championship. Ole Miss has never won either of these, and West Virginia has the most wins in both (12 of the 21 GARC championships, 19 of the 40 NCAA championships). Last season, Ole Miss ended the season 6-6, 6th in the GARC championship, and made it to the 2nd round of the NCAA championship. 5 of their 12 regular season meets were at home. The rifle team’s home facilities are part of the Patricia C. Lamar National Guard Readiness Center (more commonly known as simply the Ole Miss Rifle Range) which is located about 10 minutes away from campus.

(The Ole Miss Rifle Range)

The 2 non-varsity teams at Ole Miss are Lacrosse and Rugby, however there’s no statistical information on these teams from Ole Miss as they’re not conference competitive or an official representation of the school at varsity level.

And there we have it, a look at the other 10 sports that Ole Miss sends out to compete all around the country (and sometimes overseas, too). It’s not only the number of sports Ole Miss hosts, but the number of student athletes it supports, the quality and extensiveness of the facilities, strength of the teams, and backing by the school and regular students which makes Ole Miss such a sporty school and a strong competitor. Many of these sports will be at the start of their season while I’m there, so I hope to be able to see as many of them as I can!

That’s all for this week’s post (even though it’s a bit delayed, whoops). Thanks for reading! 4.5 weeks left until it’s time to go!

- Emily xx