A Championship March for Fighting Bees Athletes

The St. Ambrose Dance team won its third national championship in four years and its fourth in the past seven years on March 10.

On March 1, senior Anthony Peters won his third successive NAIA National Indoor Track and Field Championship 3,000-meter race walk championship. Coupled with a pair of outdoor championships that he will try and add to in May, Peters is a five-time national champ in his SAU career.

The women's 1-meter diving championship Andrea Adam won at the NAIA National Swimming and Diving Championships on March 1 was only her first. Of course, Adam is a freshman and this is SAU's first year of swimming and diving competition. Oh, and did we mention that  Adam won a second national title a day later in the 3-meter competition? Both times, by the way, the runner-up was Adam's teammate, fellow freshman Taylor Madison.

Our Athletics Department may need to look into attaching a warning label to future recruiting materials. Caution: Winning national championships at St. Ambrose may be habit-forming.

"What a magnificent month of March our Fighting Bees had," said Sister Joan Lescinski, CSJ, PhD, president of St. Ambrose. "We do enjoy calling them national champions, but we are no less proud to note the dance team also won the National Champions of Character team award for sportsmanship and community service and that 18 members of our winter sports teams earned NAIA scholar-athlete status this past month."

For added measure, Madi Epperson and John Kerr each won Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year honors in women's and men's basketball.

And while March is nearly over, the Bees' winter season championship run is not finished. On March 24-25 NAIA National Invitational bowling event, the SAU men finished second and the women and claimed fourth, with Nate Stubler and Kayla Crawford each earning all-tourney status. That meet was a warm-up for the Intercollegiate Team Championships on April 18-21 in Lincoln, Neb. This year was the first time both SAU teams qualified for the ITC, which bring collegiate bowlers for all sizes of schools together to vie for national honors.

As the lone seniors on the dance squad, Emma Hart and Kaci Greenleaf can claim to be champions in all but one of their four years. Hart, however, said a fourth-place finish a year ago was key to this year's championship effort.

"It really put us in a great place this year going forward. We were very motivated. We were very hungry. It put us in the right mindset going into the year," she said. "We started in August, a week before the school year and we practiced all first semester, probably 15 hours a week and we'll add on as we need. We do put a lot of time in."

Little wonder Greenleaf gave the dance floor these four celebratory thumps  — her version of a Tiger Woods fist pump — at the conclusion of a final routine she called "our best performance yet.

"I didn't want it to end," she said. "I wanted to stay on that floor. Because it was my last time ever being out there with them. Just a feeling that you can't explain."

She said she and Hart are leaving the program in position to "keep building as a team and continue to win." Best of all, SAU will host the NAIA Dance and Cheerleading Championships in each of the next two seasons.

Adam said she had no idea what to expect coming into her first collegiate diving season. She and Madison pushed each other throughout the season and then discovered the closest competition was their partner.

"It's pretty good," she said of being a national champion. "It's such a long season and finally all of our hard work paid off. There's really nothing better."

The only problem is now the bar is set as high as it can go. "This only gives our coach more reason to push us in practice," Madison said of Rob Miecznikowski, the program building coach they call "Ski."

Peters will keep pushing himself, even after he bids for title No. 6 in May. He will enroll in the SAU Master of Science in Exercise Physiology program starting in June and will continue to train in the new Wellness and Recreation Center through 2020, with an eye on competing in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

"As long as I shoot for that goal, keep up with my training, and stay conscious of what I'm doing, I think it's possible, yes," he said.