Fresno State Athletics
Jim Bartko Letter to the Red Wave
12/8/2015 12:00:00 AM | General
Hello Red Wave,
I want to wish you and your family a happy holiday season. As I am close to completing my first year on the job, I want to let you know how thankful my entire family is to be a part of this community and serve Fresno State as its Director of Athletics.
Speaking of being new to Fresno State, you may have heard that we hired Carrie Coll from the Mountain West office to be our Senior Associate Athletic Director for Sport Services. Carrie brings extensive experience to Fresno State and is a valuable addition to our department. We hope that you join us in welcoming the Coll family to Fresno.
It was a tough fall for the Bulldog football team. Our expectations are to compete for conference championships, which in the first three seasons under Tim DeRuyter we did so by winning two league titles while also appearing in the 2014 Mountain West Championship game. We fell short of that this year. We know that Coach DeRuyter and his staff are more committed than ever to getting your Bulldogs back to competing for Mountain West Championships. I want it to be known that we are committed to Tim DeRuyter being our head coach and supporting the program to make sure it does just that. The fans, alumni and students deserve the best product on the field and we all will work together to make that happen.
We are now in full swing for our winter sports programs and if you have not been out to the Save Mart Center to watch our basketball programs, I encourage you to do so. Both Rodney Terry and Jaime White's teams are exciting to watch and you can catch both programs Saturday when they play a doubleheader at home starting at 2 p.m. We have a number of great ticket deals available, including one that will get you three games (Saturday's doubleheader and the men's game vs. Bakersfield on Dec. 16) for a total of just $9.
We want to congratulate our freshman swimmer Ugne Mazutaityte, who broke the 100m and 200m backstroke records for Lithuania at the AT&T Winter National Championships this past weekend in Washington. Bulldog fans can watch her and the rest of her teammates in the pool on Jan. 3 when the `Dogs return to action after winter break. Indoor track and field also gets started after the turn of the New Year and we look forward to watching them compete.
One last bit of good news for you, senior football student-athlete Justin Northern was named an Academic All-American last week. He became the 45th Academic All-American in Fresno State history and is applying for jobs in fields such as aerospace, avionics testing, project management, HVAC, systems engineering and product development. He has a very bright future and we are proud of him.
Go ‘Dogs,
Jim
Players Mentioned
