Look at the facts: Sonoma State has been represented in pro sports’ so-called Big 3 – the NFL, NBA and MLB – and currently on campus, we have coaches who have given much of their lives to the school and the teams are constantly competitive.
Sonoma State needs to keep sports.
The current face of Seawolves sports is Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaylen Wells, now starring as a rookie in the NBA. Wells spent two seasons at Sonoma State, 2021-22, and as a sophomore he was named California Collegiate Athletic Association player of the year after leading the conference in scoring – 22.4 points per game – and rebounding – 8.4 rebounds per game.
Wells used his platform on social media to spread the hashtag #SaveSeawolfAthletics and create awareness.
“It’s a beautiful campus and a nice place. I think being there allowed me to grow as a person on and off the floor,” Wells told me and the San Francisco Chronicle in a conference call. “I met a lot of great people, and I had a lot of great teammates that I’ll be friends with for the rest of my life.”
After transferring to Washington State for his junior year, Wells was drafted by the Memphis Grizzlies with the 39th pick in the 2024 NBA Draft. Wells broke out by hitting a game-winner in Summer League action against the Philadelphia 76ers and hasn’t looked back since.
A contender for Rookie of the Year and recently named to All-Star Weekend’s Rising Stars game at San Francisco’s Chase Center, Wells is using a lesson he learned at Sonoma State from Seawolves coach Rich Shayewitz.
“The biggest thing was, throughout my freshman year, just being able to take the positives through all the negatives – we were 3-25 my freshman year and that’s not too positive of a season for anyone,” Wells said with a laugh. “But if you saw how we acted with each other, you would think we were 25-3.”
Wells’ comments are an example of how Shayewitz was able to keep his team motivated as the next year, Sonoma State qualified for the CCAA tournament as the No. 5 seed.
Shayewitz has only been the men’s coach for three seasons but he is the definition of a coach that would do anything for the school; he also coached women’s basketball for four seasons. And when Wells was a freshman, Shayewitz coached both the men’s and women’s teams…at the same time.
“So he gave all of his time into the basketball program and Sonoma State,” Wells said.
I know coaches who have sleepless nights trying to run one sports program, let alone two. This kind of commitment demonstrates how much Shayewitz was willing to give to a place he called home.
After hearing Sonoma State would be cutting all sports programs to counter a $23.9 million budget deficit, both Shayewitz and Wells were shocked.
“Unfortunately, steps to ensure that athletics would be a part of the campus community were not taken and here we are now cutting 60 years of Sonoma State athletics traditions,” Shayewitz told me in an email. “It saddens me as an alum, a former-student athlete and a Sonoma State community member for almost 30 years.”
I asked Wells what words of encouragement he would offer to the 210-plus student-athletes who still want to continue their athletic careers.
“The way I looked at things was like if you have the talent, they’ll find you,” Wells told me. “Don’t give up on your dreams and keep working.”
With the popularity of Wells’ story, high school students who weren’t largely recruited could have looked at Sonoma State to further their academic and athletic careers. If Shayewitz had such an impact on Wells’ trajectory, who says he can’t do that for someone else? But with SSU shutting down sports, those student-athletes are being robbed of that opportunity.
Opportunities taken advantage of by the likes of late Pro Football Hall of Famer Larry Allen and 10-year major league pitcher Scott Alexander, both of whom got their starts in Rohnert Park.
Yes, Sonoma State once had a football team. You can look it up. That’s a fact, too.
Not only is Sonoma State a platform for student-athletes to further their athletic careers, it is also a place filled with coaches who have a ton of experience.
One of the winningest coaches at SSU is golf coach Val Verhunce, who heads both the men’s and women’s teams and has been the only golf coach in school history, dating to 2004.
Verhunce elevated golf to incredible heights, the men making 11-straight NCAA Division II Championship Tournament appearances, with the women, who began play in 2008, going five times in the last 10 years.
The program Verhunce built from the ground up more than two decades ago is being cut with no notice, and that’s not a way to treat one of the school’s most storied coaches.
Another coach who has given more than 20 years to SSU is Bear Grassl, who heads the women’s volleyball team. He got the job in 2002 and is the most successful volleyball coach in Sonoma State history, winning more than 370 games. They have made the CCAA tournament the past four seasons and, from 2008-2015, qualified for the NCAA Division II Regionals.
Not to mention first-year baseball head coach Jacob Garsez who just moved his family to Sonoma State from Oregon to spend just one season here.
I would understand getting rid of some sports programs if they had been unsuccessful and non-competitive for multiple years in a row, but that is just not the case here. Every Sonoma State sports team has been competitive for the past 10 years.
The most successful sports team on campus has been women’s soccer, headlined by coach Emiria Salzmann. The 13-year head coach led her team to three CCAA League Championships between 2019 and 2022.
Now, that program is axed.
“No one in our department knew so we had no time to prepare,” Salzmann told me in another email. “It was a terrible and incredibly insensitive decision to handle the news in that way. After having sat in two meetings since the news broke, my reaction is now upset and disappointed that the SSU administration was not able to succinctly answer the questions that we had about how we got to this point. That added insult to injury.”
Also, in the past two seasons, the women’s cross country team has sent a student-athlete to the NCAA Division II National Championships – Gianna Bomarito in 2023 and Constance O’Neal in 2024. Those are no small feats and with O’Neal being a sophomore this past season who knows what she could have accomplished at Sonoma State the next two years.
With Sonoma State eliminating all 11 sports programs, it is the end of an era, an era filled with winning seasons, coaches who gave everything and student-athletes who put it all on the court or field.
“It really just sucks how quick it all happened and now all the student-athletes are scrambling and trying to find other places just to keep playing the sport they love,” Wells said. “I read the news and didn’t think it was true.”
