The Canisius College Golden Griffins are composed of 16 teams representing
Canisius College in intercollegiate athletics. These teams include men's and women's basketball, cross country, track, lacrosse, soccer, and swimming and diving. Men's sports include baseball, ice hockey, and golf. Women's sports include volleyball, soccer, and softball. The Golden Griffins compete in the
NCAA Division I and are members of the
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) for most sports, excluding men's ice hockey which competes in
Atlantic Hockey.
Sports sponsored
Baseball
In 2008, the men's baseball team won the regular season MAAC championship for the first time in its history with a 41–13 record. This broke the school record for wins in a single season. One season later, the team advanced to its first MAAC Championship game in program history.
Men's basketball
The Canisius men's basketball team has made four appearances in the
NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, the last appearance coming in
1996.
Ice hockey
The Canisius men's ice hockey team has made one appearance in the
NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament, in
2013.
Men's lacrosse
In
2008, Canisius men's
lacrosse
Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensiv ...
won the MAAC tournament and earned its first ever bid to the
NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship tournament.
Canisius again won the MAAC championship in 2012. Sitting at 2–7, The Griffs would win their final 2 regular season games to advance to the MAAC championship as the 3 seed. From there Canisius would avenge regular season losses to Detroit 12–10 and Siena 10–9 en route to their 2nd MAAC Championship and automatic qualifier. The Griffs would eventually fall to 2012 NCAA champion Loyola. In 2018 the Griffins would win the MAAC tournament after entering as a number 4 seed and get an autobid to the NCAA Tournament. The Griffins would fall to Robert Morris in the NCAA Tournament Play-in game by a score of 12–6.
Softball
The Canisius College softball team recently won the 2009 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, its 3rd consecutive title win. This marks the team's 11th trip to the NCAA tournament in the last 15 years. The softball team has consistently won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament.
Former sports
Football
Canisius sponsored
football intermittently from 1918 to 2002.
Wrestling
The Golden Griffins had club
wrestling for two years before starting a varsity team in 1970–71. Coached by Charles Mann, the Griffs compiled a losing record of 0–7. The following year, the team was dropped after the first dual meet due to "lack of student participation."
Synchronized swimming
The Canisius
synchronized swimming team began as a
club team in 1992, before being elevated to a
varsity team one year later, in 1993. Canisius re-classified the synchronized swimming team back to the club level following the conclusion of the 2014 season, after the NCAA
dropped the sport from its Emerging Sports classification. The Canisius synchronized swim team had been the 3rd place team in the nation since 2008, fielding several national champions in several categories each year. The team had been ECAC champions since 1996.
Synchronized swimming head coaches
*
Joanne Wright, 1993–2004
*
Stacy Leiker, 2004–2006
*
Jill Wright, 2006–2014
Rivalries
Canisius won the Canal Cup in 2008 and 2009. The cup commemorates the athletic rivalry between Canisius College and Niagara University. Canisius has won the trophy two times in the Canal Cup's three-year existence.
Both Canisius and Niagara maintain rivalries with the other two Division I universities in western New York. The joint rivalry between the two and
Saint Bonaventure University is known as the
Little Three
The ''Little Three'' is a term started by and used in reference to athletic competition between three private liberal arts colleges in the New England region of the United States: Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Wesleyan University i ...
. The four-way rivalry between those three schools and the
State University of New York at Buffalo
The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...
(the only public, non-Catholic Division I school in the region) is known as the Big 4. (Of note, in men's basketball, both its current coach, former Buffalo coach
Reggie Witherspoon, and his most recent predecessor, former Saint Bonaventure coach
Jim Baron, previously coached at other Big 4 schools before joining Canisius.)
Mascot
Canisius' mascot is the Golden Griffin. The college adopted it in 1932, after Charles A. Brady ('33) wrote a story in a Canisius publication honoring Buffalo's centennial year as a city. Brady wrote about Rene-Robert LaSalle's
Le Griffon
''Le Griffon'' (, ''The Griffin'') was a sailing vessel built by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle in 1679.
''Le Griffon'' was constructed and launched at or near Cayuga Island on the Niagara River and was armed with seven cannons. The ...
, the first European ship to sail the upper Great Lakes, built here in
Buffalo. The name stuck, and Canisius' mascot was born.
According to GoGriffs.com, the
griffin is a "mythical creature of supposed gigantic size that has the head, forelegs and wings of an eagle and the hindquarters, tail and ears of a lion." It represents values such as strength, vigilance, and intelligence, all of which befit a college and qualities that one would look for in students and athletes alike.
Pro-football venue
The College was also the home field of the
Buffalo All-Americans of the early
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
. Around 1917, Buffalo manager,
Barney Lepper, signed a lease for the team to play their home games at Canisius College. The All-Americans played several of their games at Canisius before relocating to
Bison Stadium in 1924.
References
External links
*
{{Buffalo Sports
Sports in Buffalo, New York