The American International Yellow Jackets are composed of 21 teams representing American International College in intercollegiate athletics, including men and women's basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, and track and field. Men's sports include baseball, football, ice hockey, and wrestling. Women's sports include field hockey, rugby, softball, tennis, and volleyball. The Yellow Jackets compete in NCAA Division II and are members of the Northeast-10 Conference for all sports except ice hockey and women's rugby, which compete in NCAA Division I, and wrestling, which is NCAA Division II Independent. The men's ice hockey team is a member of Atlantic Hockey.
The Yellow Jackets started competing in the 1933-34 academic season in football, men's basketball and baseball. Men's soccer was added just one year later. The athletic department grew to five teams in the winter of 1948 when the Yellow Jackets started their ice hockey team.
Twenty years later, AIC introduced its first women's sport, softball. Judy Groff was introduced as the first softball coach, a position she held for 42 seasons. Volleyball, which was invented down the road in Holyoke, Massachusetts, started in the fall of 1974 with Groff also taking the reins.
In the 1977-78 school year, AIC began competing in women's basketball and men's golf. It would be seven years before the athletic department grew again, when they added women's soccer for the 1985 school year.
With the emergence of lacrosse in the Northeast, the Yellow Jackets added men's lacrosse in the spring of 1992. In 1996-97, field hockey and women's lacrosse were added to the department to bring the women's teams total to six.
Ten years later, the Yellow Jackets added six teams to their already extensive department in men's and women's cross country, men's and women's indoor track, and men's and women's outdoor track.
The newest addition to the athletic department will be the women's golf team in the spring of 2018.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
NCAA sports
American International College Lacrosse Video
NCAA appearances
- Baseball: 1991
- Men's Basketball: 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1994, 2000, 2010, 2015
- Elite Eight: 1968, 1969, 1970, 1985
- Men's Cross Country: 2012, 2014, 2016
- Football: 2008, 2013
- Men's Golf: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015
- Women's Basketball: 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2016
- Elite Eight: 2002, 2006
- National Finalist: 2006
- Field Hockey: 2010
- Women's Soccer: 1998, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2016
- Softball: 1985, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003
- World Series: 1996, 1997
- Volleyball: 2010, 2016
Club sports
AIC also has a college rugby program that was founded in 2009 and began play in 2010. The rugby program is part of the school's athletic department, has varsity status, with rugby scholarships available for students. AIC plays in Division I in the East Coast Rugby Conference. AIC rugby is led by interim head coach Rob Guiry.
Notable alumni
- Romina Bell, Austrian football defender, currently playing for FC Neunkirch in the Swiss Nationalliga A.
- Jim Calhoun, a Hall of Fame basketball coach
- Asnage Castelly, Olympic Games 1st Haitian wrestler in Summer Olympics in the 74kg freestyle competition also the flag bearer of the Haitian delegation for the Olympics opening.
- Mario Elie, NBA guard
- Dave Forbes, NHL hockey player
- John Gibbons, First African American U.S. Marshall for the District of Massachusetts
- Daquan Holmes, NFL cornerback for the Green Bay Packers
- Bruce Laird, NFL safety for the Baltimore Colts
- Tom Rychlec, NFL and AFL tight end for several teams
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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