Rhode Island Rams and Brown Bears after the Governors Cup Game

The Rhode Island Rams are the athletic programs of the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Isla ...

, based in Kingston,

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

, United States. The Rams compete in the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

's Division I as a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference. The football team, however, competes in the Colonial Athletic Association of the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision, as the A-10 does not sponsor football. The program's athletic director is Thorr Bjorn. The school's colors are

light blue The first use of "light blue" as a color term in English is in the year 1915. In Russian and some other languages, there is no single word for blue, but rather different words for light blue (, goluboy) and dark blue (, siniy). The ancient Gree ...

(officially referred to as " Keaney blue"), white, and

navy blue Navy blue is a very dark shade of the color blue. Navy blue got its name from the dark blue (contrasted with naval white) worn by officers in the Royal Navy since 1748 and subsequently adopted by other navies around the world. When this color ...

. The school's mascot is Rhody the Ram. It was chosen in 1923 as tribute to the school's agricultural history, making its first appearance in 1929. The school has not used a live ram since the introduction of "Rhody," a student in an anthropomorphic ram costume, in 1974.

Teams

As a primary member of the Atlantic 10 Conference, the University of Rhode Island sponsors teams in eight men's and ten women's

sanctioned sports, with football competing in the Colonial Athletic Association.

Baseball

The Rams baseball program played its first season in 1898. It plays at Bill Beck Field on campus. In 2005, under head coach Frank Leoni, the program reached its first NCAA tournament.

Basketball

URI Basketball went to the NCAA tournament in 2017 after an 18 year drought, nearly upsetting Final Four participant #3 Oregon in the second round. In the 1990s, the Rams made the Big Dance in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

, and

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

. In 1998, the Rams went on a surprise run to the Elite 8. The women's team has made one NCAA appearance in 1996 after going 21–8 and 13–3 in A10 play, losing 90–82 to Oklahoma State. They have one other postseason appearance in the 2022 WNIT.

Football

Softball

Rhode Island's softball team has appeared in one

Women's College World Series The Women's College World Series (WCWS) is the final portion of the NCAA Division I softball tournament for college softball in the United States. Eight teams participate in the WCWS, which begins with a double-elimination tournament. In other wo ...

in 1982.

National championships

Team

Facilities

''Source:''

Media coverage

Television

University of Rhode Island sports are televised regionally on the Ocean State Network, a joint venture of Cox Communications and

WJAR WJAR (channel 10) is a television station in Providence, Rhode Island, United States, affiliated with NBC. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station has studios on Kenney Drive in Cranston, Rhode Island (shared with Telemundo owned-and-ope ...

. OSN provides television and streaming coverage of all regular season men's basketball games not broadcast on a national carrier, and select football, baseball, soccer and women's basketball games. Select men's basketball games are also covered by

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

, and

A-10 The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II is a single-seat, twin-turbofan, straight-wing, subsonic attack aircraft developed by Fairchild Republic for the United States Air Force (USAF). In service since 1976, it is named for the Republic ...

tournament games are televised by contract with ESPN,

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

and

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

. The University's ACHA men's ice hockey and women's basketball home games have live streaming video available on their respective websites.

Radio

Commercial coverage of men's basketball and football is provided by iHeartMedia stations

WHJJ WHJJ (920 kHz, "News Radio 920 & 104.7 FM") is a commercial radio station in Providence, Rhode Island. It carries a talk radio format and is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The studios and offices are on Oxford Street in Providence. WHJJ operates ...

and

WWBB WWBB (101.5 FM, "B101") is a radio station in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. The station plays classic hits from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. WWBB's offices and studios are located on Oxford Street in Providence, on the 3rd and 4th floor ...

in the Providence area, with rights managed by Learfield IMG College. The longtime announcer for both sports is Steve McDonald, who in 2011 was awarded the inaugural

Ben Mondor Bernard Georges "Ben" Mondor (March 26, 1925 – October 3, 2010) was a Canadian-born American business executive and baseball executive, best known as the owner of the Pawtucket Red Sox from 1977 until his death. Biography Mondor was born in Mar ...

Award for "extraordinary contributions in...sports in Rhode Island". Non-commercial coverage of home games for football,

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

, men's (and select women's) basketball, as well as the school's ACHA men's ice hockey team can be heard on the University's student radio station WRIU. Other sports, including men's and women's soccer, softball, women's ice hockey and select women's basketball games are carried on WRIU's online station RIU2.

Club sports

The University of Rhode Island Club Sports program consists of 13 teams. Each team is organized and managed by students with guidance from the Coordinator of Club Sports. They include Soccer, Tennis, Hockey, Field Hockey, Rowing, Sailing, Rugby, Swimming, Volleyball, Gymnastics, and Equestrian. The women's ice hockey team competes in Division I of the American Collegiate Hockey Association in ESCHL league.

Mascot

Rhody the Ram is the official

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...

the University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Island ...

. His mascot status was given on March 8, 1923, and he made his first appearance on November 21, 1929. At one time a real ram was housed at a dairy

barn A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain.Alle ...

across from the campus, but that stopped in the 1960s, and was picked up for one year in 1974. Unlike other popular universities, the Rhody the Ram mascot program is run by the URI Student Alumni Association, a student run organization that serves the university by organizing many popular events on campus.

Controversial incidents

February 3, 1998 – Rhody the Ram tried to prevent the St. Joe's Hawk from his eternal flapping by putting an inner tube over its head, temporarily immobilizing his arms. While trying to remove the tube, the Hawk's head (costume) fell off. The incident was televised and repeated on ESPN.

References

External links

* {{Navboxes , titlestyle = {{CollegePrimaryStyle, Rhode Island Rams, color=white , list = {{Atlantic 10 Conference navbox {{Colonial Athletic Association navbox {{Rhode Island Sports