Kevin Sethre, Mountain Folk

While entering Kennedy Center on the way to his office on Wednesday morning, Augsburg Athletic Director Jeff Swenson noticed a small poster promoting the upcoming Auggie Awards on the front entrance. He was confused when, upon further inspection, he saw Carlee Kobow, a forward and one of the captains on the Auggie women’s basketball team.

According to Don Stoner, Sports Information Director, Swenson walked into his office with the poster in his hand and asked him who was on it and how long Augsburg has had a women’s basketball team. After he was informed that the team has existed since 1972. Swenson wanted to know how many other sports teams Augsburg has.

Stoner spent the next several minutes listing off the 19 intercollegiate sports teams that Augsburg currently has. When he mentioned that the men’s hockey team won the MIAC and Booker Coplin was named the Division-III Basketball National Player of the Year, Swenson’s jaw dropped. He left the office shortly after, saying that he needed to sit down and try to focus on work, which he admitted would be difficult in light of the new information he had just received.

Sources reported that Swenson returned to Stoner’s office about twenty minutes later and wanted to know more about Devean George, who played basketball at Augsburg before being drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the 1999 NBA draft. Stoner said that Swenson “nearly passed out” after hearing that George played eleven seasons of professional basketball.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know about this until now,” said Swenson, who has been the athletic director since 2001. He also mentioned that it would be nice to see some of the teams in action and checked the baseball schedule to see when the next home game is, shortly before being told that they play more than three miles off campus.

At press time, Swenson had started editing his Auggie Awards speech to include a few sentences about the newly discovered teams.

This article was originally published in the April 5, 2019 issue.