League brings back fond memories
Old Dominion is headed back to its sports roots, and those roots were what might be considered some of the Monarchs’ glory days.
ODU announced Wednesday a move to the Sun Belt Conference as part of another seismic shift in the college athletics landscape. The Monarchs will depart Conference USA — where they’ve resided since 2014 — for the Sun Belt Conference, likely in 2023.
Old Dominion joins a league that also is expected to include current C-USA members Marshall and Southern Miss and FCS football power James Madison.
For ODU, it’s a return to a conference in which the Monarchs’ athletic program rose to new heights during a stretch in the league from 1982-91. That era included a national championship in women’s basketball and multiple national titles in field hockey.
A look back at ODU’s noteworthy moments in the Sun Belt Conference:
1982
Old Dominion announces in May its intentions to move to the Sun Belt.
ODU wins its first national title since the announcement — the ICYRA National Championship in women’s sailing.
1983
The women’s basketball team already was a budding contender after Nancy Lieberman and Anne Donovan guided ODU to AIAW national titles in 1979 and ’80. In 1983, Donovan, a 6-foot-8 center from Wilmington, Delaware, caps her college career by guiding the Lady Monarchs (29-6) to the Final Four and becoming ODU’s first Naismith Women’s Basketball Player of the Year. ODU hosts the Final Four at Scope, but falls 71-55 in the semifinals to Louisiana Tech. Donovan graduates as — and remains — ODU’s all-time leader in points, rebounds and blocked shots.
Old Dominion’s baseball team christens its new digs — the Bud Metheny Baseball Complex, a 2,500-seat stadium soon dubbed “the Bud.”
Coach Paul Webb and the Monarchs basketball team earn the program’s first Sun Belt Conference title as co-regular season champs.
1984
The Monarchs men’s soccer team claims its first Sun Belt Conference championship.
1985
Women’s basketball coach
Marianne Stanley guides ODU to a third consecutive Sun Belt Conference title, then the Lady Monarchs reach the mountaintop with a 70-65 victory over Georgia for the program’s first NCAA national title.
1986
The men’s basketball team — coached by Tom Young and led by senior star Kenny Gattison — wins its first (and only) outright Sun Belt Conference regular-season crown, reaches the Associated Press Top 25 and defeats West Virginia 72-64 to win its first NCAA Tournament game.
1987
Wendy Larry, a former ODU player and an assistant coach under Stanley, takes over the women’s basketball program for the 1986-87 season and steers ODU to a 6-0 Sun Belt regular season.
1990
In a last hurrah in the Sun Belt, the women’s basketball team wins a conference crown and reaches No. 5 nationally before falling to Tennessee in a second-round NCAA Tournament game.
1991
In women’s basketball, a final season in the Sun Belt doesn’t go well (5-21 overall, 2-4 conference), but Larry and ODU would
move on to dominate their new conference: the Colonial Athletic Association. The team would win an NCAA-record 17 consecutive conference championships.
The men’s basketball team finishes 14-18 in Tom Young’s final season, and the Monarchs usher in a new era the following season with a new conference, the CAA, and new coach in Oliver Purnell.
The field hockey team never won a Sun Belt Conference title — the league never has sponsored the sport. But coach Beth Anders and ODU win a sixth NCAA national title. The following year, Old Dominion wins the first of many CAA titles and claims a seventh NCAA crown. The team currently plays as a member of the Big East.