By Spencer Laws

The 2022 fall sports season officially ended, capped off in part with the volleyball team’s magical run to the National Championship last month. I thought I would go back through and review the prime moments from this semester. 

Volleyball’s magical run 

Starting out with the most apparent moment of the semester — the volleyball team’s run to the NCAA National Championship.

The Cards have produced back-to-back final-four appearances. This year, they advanced to the National Championship by beating ACC foe Pittsburgh in a five set dogfight. Along this journey, the team also collected a shared ACC Championship with a total record of 31-1, dropping only one conference game. This was the first time in not only Louisville history, but ACC history that a program from the conference has reached the championship match. 

The best third quarter ever? 

During the spookiest weekend of the year, the Louisville Football team had one of the most dominant single-quarter performances in the history of the game.

In the third quarter, the Card’s defense forced six Demon Deacon turnovers, bringing the total for the whole game to eight. The Cards came into the second half one point down to Wake Forest, 13-14, and finished the quarter leading 41-14. The final score of this thrashing finished with a 48-21 Cards win, which led to the latest edition of football faithfuls storming Cardinal Stadium. This will likely be looked at as one of the more notable Scott Satterfield wins during his time leading the Cards. 

Field hockey braves a tough schedule

The field hockey team had a very tough task throughout the entire season; they ended up facing 12 Top 25 nationally ranked opponents over a 20-game schedule.

In those 20 games, the team was able to knock off many ranked opponents including beating No. 11 Penn State 2-1 at the end of August, No. 4 ranked Michigan 2-1 at home this past September, and lastly downing No. 24 Duke in a shoutout to win 2-1 at home in mid-October. With their impressive performance weathering the tough schedule, the squad was able to clinch an NCAA tournament birth. Unfortunately for the Cards, it was all Penn State in the first round.

Brohm’s Home, Satterfield’s Out 

The U of L football program is set to have some new management for the 2023 season in what became one of the weirder coaching turnovers in recent history.

Former head coach Scott Satterfield found himself a new program to run the ball with during a 2nd and 14th situation in the Cincinnati Bearcats. Athletic Director Josh Heird stepped up to the plate and hired Louisville football’s proverbial son, Jeff Brohm.

Brohm is coming off a very impressive stint at the University of Purdue, revitalizing the culture up in West Lafayette. In nine seasons as a head coach, Brohm has accumulated a 66-44 record, won five of six bowl games, and lastly won the division or conference three times while at Purdue and WKU. Brohm played for legendary U of L coach Howard Schellenberger from the years 1989-1993.

(Another rather interesting fact: Brohm was also a very good baseball player while in high school; he was drafted to the MLB twice while in high school and college.)

The Fall as a whole

There were a lot of great moments that came out of the Fall Semester that will hopefully forge the path for this new era the University is heading into as new leadership continues to manage the University we attend and love.

Photo Courtesy //  Taris Smith, Annabelle Merz, Rachel Klotz, Louisville Athletics //