Ongoing changes to athletics
As another sports season begins at Carnegie Mellon, students will notice many changes in Tartan athletics. Over the spring and summer, Athletics Director Susan Bassett initiated these changes in an attempt to continue and enhance the Tartans’ successes.
These changes include upgrades to the sites of these athletic competitions as well as fresh faces within the athletics department.
Last summer’s major changes within athletics were FieldTurf on Gesling Stadium and a varsity athletic weight room. The Carnegie Mellon football team has never lost playing on the new silica sand and cryogenic rubber FieldTurf; going 6–0 in 2006. More changes occurred this summer and the results are impressive.
The old track was taken out and resurfaced, and a new scoreboard sits nicely where the old scoreboard once was. The IM fields continue to be upgraded, and a Tartans Pavilion is being constructed on the southern edge of the stadium.
The Tartans Pavilion will be a 4100 square foot, glass-enclosed eatery, which will open up toward the turf. When the pavilion is completed this fall, students will be able to sit and eat pizza while watching a football game.
Skibo Gymnasium also underwent some renovations this summer. The historic gym, built in 1924, will host the volleyball team this fall and then the men’s and women’s basketball teams in the winter.
Carnegie Mellon also welcomes two fresh faces to athletics. In late April, Matthew Kinney was hired as the new head men’s and women’s swimming coach. Over the summer, the women’s soccer program hired Betsy Warren as a full-time assistant coach. Warren replaced Tony Mohammed, who took a head-coaching job at Wellesley College.
Kinney was the head men’s and women’s swimming coach at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va. for 12 years before taking this Carnegie Mellon position.
During his stint at Mary Washington, he led the men’s and women’s teams to a combined dual record of 182–59, with 22 combined Capital Athletic Conference (CAC) titles. He has coached 88 All-American performances and was named CAC Coach of the Year 12 times (seven times as women’s coach and five as men’s).
Kinney graduated from Kenyon College in 1993 and is a native of Canton, Ohio. At Kenyon he was a three-time All-American for the Lords.
Named captain his senior season, he was also a part of three NCAA Division III National Championship teams.
While obtaining his master’s degree, Kinney served as an assistant coach at Western Illinois University. He has also coached at the Macomb (Ill.) Senior High School and at the Macomb County YMCA.
Warren served as an assistant coach at Ashland University for the past three seasons, and before that served as an assistant at Bryn Mawr School for Girls, Dundalk Senior High School in Maryland, and also Pulaski County High School in Virginia.
Warren was a three-year starter in college at Radford University and enjoyed tremendous success. She was named captain her senior season, and she helped the Highlanders win the Big South Conference tournament and regular season titles. Radford also earned a bid to the NCAA Division I tournament during her playing days.
Last year, the men’s swimming and diving team placed third at UAAs and the women’s team took home fourth place. The women’s soccer team finished last season with a record of 8–7–1 and a sixth-place finish in the UAA.