Dear Tulane Community:
Sometimes it's great not to be home for the holidays. Just ask our bowl-bound Green Wave football team.
I am so proud of these young men for their dedication and hard work, which have earned a bowl berth for Tulane for the first time since 2013 and just the third time since 2000. We'll learn in the next few days exactly which bowl we'll play in and which team we'll face, but whomever and wherever we play – Florida, Texas, Maryland, Alabama – there will be plenty of Tulanians cheering the Wave on to victory.
Our bowl appearance caps a remarkable year for Tulane's student-athletes. I was in the crowd last night as the Green Wave volleyball team won the first round of the National Invitational Volleyball Championships after a stellar regular season. They advance to the second round at 7 p.m. tonight at Avron B. Fogelman Arena in the Devlin Fieldhouse. Tulane cross country runner Emmanuel Rotich qualified for NCAA Cross Country Championships for the third consecutive year and was named Runner of the Year by the American Athletic Conference for the second straight year. Our women's basketball team is also off to a great start with wins over LSU and Washington.
While these and other Tulane teams have given us plenty of game-time thrills, our student-athletes deserve the loudest cheers for their achievements in the classroom, where they posted an overall Graduation Success Rate of 93 percent – a figure that ranks 10th among schools in NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and is five percentage points higher than the national average. In fact, Tulane boasts a conference-leading seven teams with perfect Graduation Success Rates – men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross country/track and field, women's golf, men's tennis and women's swimming and diving. In addition, four Tulane teams, men's tennis, women's bowling, women's cross country and women's volleyball teams, posted perfect scores in the latest Academic Progress Report, the annual scorecard of academic achievement for Division I schools.
Let's support and thank our student-athletes for representing Tulane so well both locally and nationally. Whether the venue is a classroom, a stadium, a lab, an arena, a library or a pool, the cheer is the same – Roll Wave!
