The Canisius College Golden Griffins are composed of 16 teams representing

Canisius College Canisius College is a private Jesuit college in Buffalo, New York. It was founded in 1870 by Jesuits from Germany and is named after St. Peter Canisius. Canisius offers more than 100 undergraduate majors and minors, and around 34 master's ...

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 NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of College athletics, intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major ...

and are members of the

Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC, ) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I. Of its current 11 full members, 10 are located in three states of the northeastern United States: Connecticut, New Jersey, and N ...

(MAAC) for most sports, excluding men's ice hockey which competes in

Atlantic Hockey The Atlantic Hockey Association (AHA) is an NCAA Men's Division I Ice Hockey conference which operates primarily in the northeastern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I as an ice hockey-only conference. Unlike several other c ...

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 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as NCAA March Madness and commonly called March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from ...

, the last appearance coming in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

Ice hockey

The Canisius men's ice hockey team has made one appearance in the

NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament The annual NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament is a college ice hockey tournament held in the United States by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to determine the top men's team in Division I. Like other Division I cham ...

, in

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

Men's lacrosse

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

, 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 extensively ...

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 Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

intermittently from 1918 to 2002.

Wrestling

The Golden Griffins had club

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

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 Synchronized swimming (in British English, synchronised swimming) or artistic swimming is a sport where swimmers perform a synchronized choreographed routine, accompanied by music. The sport is governed internationally by FINA (the ''Fédérati ...

team began as a club team in 1992, before being elevated to a

varsity team In most English-speaking countries, varsity is an abbreviation of the word ''university''. In the United States and Canada, the term is mostly used in relation to sports teams. Varsity in the United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, 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 Stacy or Stacey may refer to: Places In the United States: * Stacy, California, an unincorporated community * Stacy, Kentucky * Stacy, Minnesota, a city * Stacy, Virginia, a village People * Stacy (given name) * Stacy (singer) (born 199 ...

, 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 St. Bonaventure University is a private university, private Franciscan university in St. Bonaventure, New York. It has 2,381 undergraduate and graduate students. The Order of Friars Minor, Franciscan Brothers established the university in 1858. ...

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 James Edward Baron (born March 20, 1954) is a retired American college basketball coach. He previously held the position of head coach at Saint Francis University, St. Bonaventure University, the University of Rhode Island and Canisius College. ...

, 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 The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (Ancient Greek: , ''gryps''; Classical Latin: ''grȳps'' or ''grȳpus''; Late Latin, Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a legendary creature with the body, tail ...

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 Buffalo, New York had a turbulent, early-era National Football League team that operated under multiple names and several different owners between the 1910s and 1920s. The early NFL-era franchise was variously called the Buffalo All-Stars from ...

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 Howard Emmett Lepper (February 19, 1898 – December 1, 1985)
was a professional Bison Stadium in 1924.

References

External links

* {{Buffalo Sports Sports in Buffalo, New York