'Tis the season for media outlets to come up with all of their Top 10 lists. Top 10 news stories of the year, top 10 Tiger Woods mistresses, etc. We at the UNM Underground UNM News (we're legit now!) decided to give you our own top 10 lists for the year.

And to start off, these are the top 10 Lobo Athletics stories you might not have heard about this year. In between all of the press that we received this fall, some really uplifting stories unfortunately fell through the cracks.

- Benson and Carolyn

Top 10 Lobo Stories for 2009

  1. For the first time in UNM history, four fall sports programs made it to the postseason: men's soccer, volleyball and men's and women's cross country each made their respective NCAA Championships.

  2. Women's cross country took its second consecutive Mountain West Conference championship and placed 13th in NCAA Championships, while men's cross country was the MWC champions and placed 8th in the NCAA, the highest ever at UNM.

  3. Lobos were the MWC champions in men's basketball, women's golf and men's tennis.

  4. UNM had 42 All-Americans in 2008-2009 and nine student athletes were named conference athlete of the year: Ola Abu-Zekry, MWC Women's Tennis; Mike Brownstein, MWC Baseball; Lee Emanuel, MWC Men's Indoor Track & Field; Jodi Ewart, MWC Women's Golf; Jeanne Fairchild, MWC Volleyball; Lacey Oeding, MWC Women's Cross Country Freshman of the Year; Johnny Parkes, MWC Men's Tennis; Steve Saunders, MWC Men's Golf; and Thomas Schwab, Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Skiing Association (RMISA) Alpine Skier of the Year.

  5. Four Lobo coaches were honored as Coach of the Year: Steve Alford, MWC Men's Basketball; Alan Dils, MWC Men's Tennis; Joe Franklin, MWC Women's Cross Country; and Martin Kroisleitner, RMISA Alpine.

  6. Two UNM athletes were national champions in 2008-2009: Lee Emanuel won the mile at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships; and Malin Hemmingsson won the women's slalom at the NCAA Skiing Championships.

  7. Lobos are good students as well as good athletes. They posted a school record GPA of 3.14 in the fall of 2008, followed by a 3.12 in the spring of 2009, the second highest all time.

  8. Simon Edejmyr was 2009's top men's soccer ESPN The Magazine academic All-American.

  9. 13 of the 17 sports had a GPA of 3.0 or higher in the spring of 2009; while the combined GPA of UNM student athletes has been 3.0 or higher for 13 of the past 14 semesters.

  10. Freshman graduation rate for athletes is 55 percent, which is 12 percent higher than the average UNM student body. Graduation success rate, which factors in transfers, is 72 percent for the class entering 2002-2003.