Hall of Fame Welcomes Newest Members Saturday

Five outstanding athletes and a national championship team will become the newest members of the University of New Hampshire's Hall of Fame during a banquet on Saturday evening at 6 in Huddleston Hall at UNH.

The individuals being inducted are skier Vèronique Archambault-Lèger '10, volleyball player Alyson (Coler) Quinn '04, track performer Ed McCabe '87, runner Cathy Parker Rowley '08 and football quarterback Ricky Santos '07.

The 1997-98 women's hockey team, which won the America Women's College Hockey Alliance's first title with a win over Brown at the FleetCenter in Boston, is being inducted as a squad into the prestigious organization.

In addition, Andy Lietz, a longtime UNH supporter and advocate who received an honorary degree from the school in 2013, is being honored with the Joan Leitzel Award for his contributions to the lives of student athletes.

Vèronique Archambault-Lèger, 2010

Archambault-Lèger arrived in Durham from her hometown of Montreal and wasted no time in making an impact on UNH and Eastern skiing. She went out with a bang, too.

In her first NCAA Division 1 championships, hosted by UNH in 2007 at the Attitash Ski Resort, Archambault-Lèger finished third in slalom and giant slalom to grab a pair of All American honors.

"That was very exciting for me," says Vèronique. "And then to have it at our home mountain at Attitash, it was very cool to have all that support and the UNH crowd cheering us on."

Another highlight was collecting All American honors again with an eighth-place finish in her final collegiate race, the slalom in the 2010 NCAA championships at Steamboat Springs in Colorado, while competing with a broken finger.

"I had an OK first run and was able to have pretty much my best run of the season in what was the last race of my racing career," she said. "It felt pretty amazing."

A two-time captain, Vèronique was an outstanding student as well. She had a 3.92 grade point average in chemical engineering at UNH and went on to earn a PhD at Dartmouth in 2014 in chemical engineering, researching biofuels.

"She was a great skier, a great student, a rare talent," said UNH alpine coach Brian Blank. "She was the complete package. A great teammate, captain and leader and had an immense impact on the team from freshman year on."

Archambault-Lèger lives in Enfield, N.H., with her husband and two young sons and works as a chemical engineer in Lebanon.

Alyson Coler Quinn, 2004

Alyson Coler Quinn led the UNH volleyball team to back-to-back America East championships in 2002 and 2003 and the numbers she put up along the way were staggering. She came out of Monte Sereno, CA, and collected league Rookie of the Year honors as a freshman and followed up with Player of the Year accolades in both her junior and senior seasons.

"I'm still in shock about the Hall of Fame," Quinn said. "Obviously it's a team sport and it sounds cliché, but I really couldn't have done it without Jill and her assistants. It's such an honor, one I'll cherish the rest of my life."

Quinn still holds numerous school records, including for most kills with 1,812, which is more than 400 higher than the number two person on the list. She posted the program's top two and three of the top six seasons for kills and was anything but a one-way player.

"Aly had a big jump, could hit hard, had great playing experience coming in and was real competitive," said coach Jill Hirschinger. "She jumped, passed, played defense and had good backcourt skills. She had a great all-around game. She's definitely one of the top players out of UNH."

Quinn was voted into the UNH Hall of Fame two years ago, but her induction was delayed while she and her husband Greg, dealt with the health issues of their daughter, Madelyn. She needed to have a heart transplant just over a year ago.

Madelyn, who turned three years old in late April, is attending the induction ceremonies with her parents.

Ed McCabe, 1987

Originally recruited out of Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua for football and interested in perhaps trying out for the UNH basketball team, Ed McCabe found his home on the track & field teams and put together a record-setting All American career.

"A couple of moments stand out in particular, primarily around team performances my senior year," McCabe said. "Both at the outdoors conference meet and the outdoors New Englands meet we had some great all-round performances as a team. Those meets were important and special to me and I was able to contribute and we had a lot of guys step up."

McCabe set UNH outdoors records in the shot put and discus that each stood for more than two decades.

He earned his All American honors with a sixth-place finish in the 35-pound weight throw at the NCAA Indoor championships as a senior.

Being a three-sport athlete in high school, I didn't spend a lot of time weightlifting," McCabe said. "The coaching staff instilled in me that if I wanted to specialize in being a thrower they could help me with conditioning in the offseason with running and getting stronger and I did that every year."

A political science major with a minor in business administration, McCabe lives in Amherst, N.H., and is a vice president of sales for Zebra Technologies, a company based out of Illinois.

He has long been a tireless supporter of the program and co-founded the Alumni & Friends Golf Tournament that has raised funds for track & field for more than 20 years.

Cathy Parker Rowley, 2008

Cathy Parker Rowley set a couple of trends for the UNH running programs: She was one of the first of an impressive line of nursing students who also excel in track and also one of the first to shine in the 3,000 meter steeplechase event.

She closed out her UNH athletics career in fine fashion in her second straight NCAA championships appearance in Terre Haute, Indiana in 2007.

"One highlight was that last cross country race in the NCAAs," Rowley said. "That last 100, 200 yards I remember passing people and coming in and feeling so relieved and excited. . . . I loved that race so much and wanted to go out on a high note."

The year before, she had started too fast and been passed by several runners near the end.

As a senior, she finished 28^th, becoming the first UNH runner to earn All American honors in nearly 15 years.

Rowley was also the first UNH athlete, male or female, to qualify for the NCAA championships in both cross country and track and field. She also was 11^th in the NCAAs in the steeplechase as a junior.

Rowley was headed to her job as a surgical nurse at the Brigham in Boston when coach Rob Hoppler called to inform her she had been selected to the Hall.

"To be honest, I was a little overwhelmed," Rowley said. "I was pregnant at the time and getting ready to do that whole thing. My son was born in February. But I was real excited, too. I wanted the chance to thank UNH for the four years I had there."

Ricky Santos, 2007

Ricky Santos rewrote the football record books as quarterback and led UNH to a run of unparalleled success that continues to this day.

The backup quarterback at the start of his redshirt freshman season in 2004, Santos came on for injury relief before the first half of the opening game of the season ended and never looked back.

Santos led UNH to a win at Delaware that first week and passed for five touchdowns in a stunning upset win at Rutgers, an FBS team, the next.

By the end of his career, he had led the Wildcats to the FCS playoffs in four straight seasons. UNH teams have known nothing but the playoffs since and their current 12-year streak of qualifying for the tournament is the longest in the nation.

"Ricky had this ability to make people believe in him and unite people and keep people together," said UNH head coach Sean McDonnell. "People loved playing with him and people loved playing for him. One or two of these kids come through in your lifetime as a coach and I don't know if there will ever be another one like Ricky Santos."

Santos is tops in UNH history in passing yards (13,212) and touchdown passes (123) and career completion percentage (68.3) among other categories. UNH had a 37-14 record during his four seasons.

After UNH, he played professionally in the Canadian Football League for five seasons. Santos returned to the Wildcats as an assistant coach in 2013 and spent three seasons coaching wide receivers. He is now an assistant coach working with quarterbacks at Columbia University.

1997-1998 Women's Ice Hockey

The American Women's College Hockey Alliance instituted a national championship in 1998 and the Wildcats, under coach Karen Kay and led by All Americans Brandy Fisher and Nicki Luongo, grabbed the first title at the FleetCenter in Boston.

UNH beat Minnesota, 4-1, in the semifinals and knocked off Brown by the same score in the championship game.

The Wildcats won the ECAC regular season title with an 18-1-3 record and finished with a 31-5-3 record, setting a program mark for wins.

"They year was unbelievable," said Carisa Zaban, a defenseman on the team. "One loss in the league the whole year. It's so weird to think it was almost 20 years ago."

Zaban, now the women's hockey coach at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Ill., on the North Shore of Chicago, had a slightly different take on the season and championship than her teammates.

She hurt her knee in an exhibition game against the United States National team before the season began and had to sit out the year.

"It was a different perspective," she said. "I was able to watch every game from up top in the arena and that was pretty cool. It helped me realize how much I loved the sport. It was a great year and fun to watch. Watching in Boston and then coming out onto the ice afterwards was exciting."

Besides winning All American honors along with Luongo, Fisher was named the inaugural winner of the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award that is presented to the best player in women's college hockey. She also was honored as the ECAC Player of the Year.

Andy Lietz, Leitzel Award

Lietz has been a huge supporter of UNH and its athletics programs through the years and has served on various committees and panels. He was a member of the University System of New Hampshire Board of Trustees from 2000-08 and was chair from 2004-08.

As a member of the President's Blue Ribbon Panel on Intercollegiate Athletics that was formed in 2008, Lietz helped formulate plans that led to renovations and improvements in the Whittemore Center, the Field House and eventually Wildcat Stadium, which will open in September.

Prior to that, he helped put together the 2001 Knowledge Economy Education Plan (KEEP-NH), designed to advocate for high quality education as a basis for long-term economic growth.

"We had the same goal with KEEP as we do with athletic fundraising," Lietz said. "And that's to give excellence a place to flourish."

UNH's athletic facilities have come a long way in recent years with Andy Lietz as part of the equation.

"I've served several UNH presidents, but Andy has been a constant," said director of athletics Marty Scarano. "Andy sees the long term and stays the course beyond what others have the patience, vision and ownership to do. I consider him a mentor."

Lietz also played a role in the development of the Watkins Center for Student-Athlete Excellence, which opened in the Field House in April of 2015.

His support and advocacy for all things UNH make him the fitting recipient of the Joan Leitzel Award. Leitzel was a proponent of UNH Athletics during her service as President, spanning the 1996-97 through 2001-02 academic years.

Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu

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