SHORT TRIP FOR SAINT KATHERINE TODAY
Small NAIA school in San Marcos racking up miles this season
The Saint Katherine Firebirds, a tiny NAIA school in San Marcos with about 250 students and no full athletic scholarships and a rec center as a home venue, played a men’s basketball game Saturday at Division I Southern Utah in Cedar City, Utah.
The game tipped off at 1 p.m. MT and the Firebirds lost 95-47 after finishing with more turnovers than baskets. The players showered, got COVID-19 tested ahead of their next game, got the allclear and loaded into two 15passenger vans about 4:15.
And drove to Las Vegas, where they stopped for dinner. The players are preferential to Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers and The Habit Burger Grill, and both happen to be in the same strip mall off I-15.
They got back in the vans and continued southwest to … Santa Barbara. Arrived at 12:30 a.m. Played UC Santa Barbara the next afternoon.
Lost 92-55 after trailing by 25 at halftime.
Got back in the vans and drove 31⁄ hours home. Head
2 coach Kevin Williamson drives one, his assistants split time piloting the other.
“We’re used to it,” Williamson says. “That’s what we do. That’s what small college basketball is.”
At 6 tonight at Viejas Arena, the road trip is considerably shorter, just not the task. The Firebirds play San Diego State, 2-0 after a pair of double-digit wins and just two spots out of The Associated Press Top 25.
In their only previous trip there, in 2013, the Firebirds lost 118-35. The Aztecs set arena records for points (16 more than Saint Katherine had students), margin of vic
tory (83), rebounds (57) and steals (17), and nearly did for field goals (43), 3-pointers (14) and assists (27).
“Well,” then-coach Scott Mitchell said afterward, “I can thank God that nobody got decapitated.”
But Williamson wasn’t saying no when SDSU, having had a pair of games against Colorado State this week postponed, inquired if his team was available. The Firebirds are playing Pepperdine on Thursday night in Malibu. They’ll drive home tonight and leave the next morning for the 61⁄ 2- hour drive (without traffic) to St. George, Utah, where they’ll meet Div. II Dixie State on Saturday afternoon so they can get home that night.
Sure, they were available. “For us,” Williamson says, “it’s huge exposure, not just for the basketball team or the guys themselves but for the school and the athletic program in general. This is a big moment in these kids’ lives, just to get a chance to play them.”
And to be fair, the Saint Katherine of 2013 isn’t the Saint Katherine of 2020.
For starters, it’s no longer Saint Katherine College but the University of Saint Katherine after adding its first Master’s program. It has a men’s basketball team again after taking a three-year hiatus in the mid-2010s. And, unlike the 2013 team, there are no 34-year-old forwards from Trinidad and Tobago that they discovered at a 24 Hour Fitness.
The school was founded in 2010 by Dr. Frank Papatheofanis, a physician and scientist who taught at UC San Diego and wanted to create a less orthodox educational experience with an affiliation to the Orthodox Christian church. The first graduating class had one student.
The current enrollment almost exclusively consists of
student-athletes from 12 of its teams. It was 102 when Saint Katherine last came to Viejas Arena, then dipped into the 40s before the school received national academic accreditation and has been steadily climbing since. Last year’s graduating class was a record 45.
“It’s crazy different,” sports information director Pauly Ulrich says. “We’re still a small school, but it’s so much more stable now. The growth and change in culture have been incredible.”
They moved from temporary classrooms in an Encinitas office park to their own building in San Marcos. They have their own basketball and volleyball court, with their own branding and logos, at Eden Park, a nearby private rec center.
The Firebirds completed a probationary year in NAIA in 2019-20 and now are fullfledged members. The men’s basketball program resumed in 2018-19 and went 10-13, only for coach Jonathan Ramirez to leave that May.
Williamson, an assistant coach at Cal State San Marcos, was hired just two months before school started and pieced together a roster that closed with 12 straight wins to finish 15-10 before the season was abruptly ended by the pandemic. They opened this season with an 81-70 victory against another NAIA school, San Diego Christian.
But then two games against NAIA opponents were canceled by COVID-19 testing. Another, at Nevada in December, was scrapped when the Mountain West added two games to the conference schedule.
Other opportunities, though, have magically materialized. A big reason is that Papatheofanis, having practiced and taught medicine, arranged for an NCAA-level testing protocol that makes the Firebirds more attractive to Div. I programs. Another is a willingness to get in the vans and go.
“It works out well for both of us,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher said. “We don’t have to give them a huge guarantee, they’ve been testing, and it gives them a chance not to travel (far) and play a game locally against the team that they’re watching on TV. You’re excited for their kids to have an opportunity like that.”
SDSU will pay them $5,000 to get blown out tonight, a fraction of what it typically offers a Div. I opponent when it can generate ticket revenue. Even so, Williamson insists it’s not about the money.
“I get a new call or text every day about games,” said Williamson, who also has games scheduled at San Jose State and Pacific in December. “At this point, if the dates keep working, we’ll keep playing them. We’re not going to say no. The guys understand. I’ve had a lot of talks with them about it.
“I say, ‘Look, you guys read Twitter, you guys read social media, you see what’s happening. Do you want to play, or do you want to practice against each other?’ ”
And they don’t have to stop for gas today.
“I can’t wait for that 40minute drive back and forth,” Williamson said. “It’s as close as it gets for us.”