Southeast Missouri State Redhawks
The Southeast Missouri State Redhawks are the athletic teams for Southeast Missouri State University, located in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Southeast has been a member of NCAA Division I (Division I FCS for football) and compete in the Ohio Valley Conference.
History
Southeast Missouri State left the NCAA Division II athletic conference, Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1991 and joined the Division I Ohio Valley Conference. Though having struggled in the two major college sports (football and men's basketball) since moving up, they have had a few successes over the 15 year run in Division I.
Until January 2005, the athletic team nicknames were the "Indians" (men's teams) and "Otahkians" (women's teams). After a movement by Student Government, the Booster Club and the National Alumni Council, those names were officially retired in a ceremony on October 22, 2004 and replaced with "Redhawks."[1] The current mascot is a stylized hawk known as Rowdy Redhawk. The University's original mascot was known as Chief Sagamore and was represented by a student dressed in Native American regalia. Chief Sagamore was retired as mascot in the mid 1980s due to a growing cultural sensitivity to Native American mascots though the team names lasted for nearly twenty more years.
Sports
Men's sports
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Women's sports
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Basketball (men's)
The men's basketball team won a share of the regular season OVC title in 2000, and won the conference's tournament as well that year to earn an automatic bid to the 2000 NCAA Tournament. In the team's only appearance in "The Big Dance" to date, the Indians were seeded #13 in the West Region and set to face off against Louisiana State University in the opening round of the tournament. In an exciting game, 4th-seeded LSU Tigers narrowly escaped the upset as they held off the Indians 64–61.
The football team has also had its struggles since moving up to Division I-AA (now Division I FCS) in 1991, having only 3 winning seasons (1994, 2002, and 2010). The football program finally had some redemption during the 2002 season as the team made it into the I-AA polls for the first time, finishing the season ranked #23 in the ESPN/USA Today I-AA poll and #24 in the Sports Network I-AA poll. That season also produced the school's only win over a I-A opponent since moving to I-AA, as the Redhawks topped Middle Tennessee 24-14 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They would go on to wim their Ohio Valley Conference title in 2010, making their first playoff appearance the same year.
References
External Links
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