LA JOLLA, Calif. – For UC San Diego, the road to Division I athletics began with a pair of student referendums.

The first, in 2012, failed by a vote of 57 percent to 43 percent.

When it came time for the second, four years later, two graduates from the 1990s wrote side-by-side letters-to-the-editor of the student newspaper, The Guardian, arguing for and against the move.

Doug Kurtz — who now works as UC San Diego's Managing Executive Director of Development, Campus-wide Campaign Initiatives — recently recalled those letters.

The writer urging a yes vote, Kurtz recalled, in essence told students, "You're not voting on where we are today. You're voting on where we're going to be in the future."

The letter was written by Aryeh Bourkoff, founder and CEO of LionTree. He argued that students would benefit from a broader campus experience, increased campus pride, an upgrade in visibility and stature, and much more. He concluded by writing, "Next week you have a real shot at shaping the future of your school. I urge you to take it." 

They did. And the future arrived this past March.

One weekend, UC San Diego's basketball teams were in a Las Vegas suburb, playing in the Big West Tournament for the first time. Two championship-game victories there meant that the next week, the women were in Los Angeles and the men were in Denver, competing in the NCAA Tournament for the first time. The latter game was played before the largest crowd ever (19,302) to witness a UC San Diego sporting event.

"This is the realization of a years-long dream," Kurtz said in Denver.

The short-term dream ended for both teams when they lost their initial tournament games, the men taking Michigan down to the final shot. But in many ways, the dream is just beginning. 

"Everybody wants to be part of success," UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla said. "(In Denver) I've never seen so much excitement in the eyes of alumni but more important was a sense of pride that I could see."

It was exactly what Director of Athletics Earl W. Edwards foresaw 25 years ago when he first arrived in La Jolla. He said he believed a world-class university the size of UC San Diego should be competing at the highest level of intercollegiate athletics.

"I didn't know it would take 20 years, but that was my goal," Edwards said with a laugh.

There were many reasons the move didn't happen sooner, beginning with the fact the university had just moved from Div. III to Div. II when he arrived. But what Edwards said he tried to get people to understand about the value of intercollegiate athletics is that it's about "much more" than just the games.

"It does several things that no other department or unit can do collectively," he said, listing enhancements in:
-- school spirit
-- alumni engagement
-- community involvement
-- branding of the school
-- donor solicitation

This past basketball season, with the men's and women's teams becoming the first ever from the same school to qualify for the NCAA Tournament in their first year of eligibility, "hit all those things in a significant way," Edwards said.

He added: "So for me this year was vindication of the idea of what athletics can do."

Among those not surprised by what happened was Allyson Satterlund, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life. Satterlund said when she first met Edwards after taking her job in late 2018, she told him, "I can already see you at the top of the ladder, cutting the net. And he looked at me like, 'Well, of course. Sure. Maybe.'"

Edwards laughed when reminded of the conversation and said the day after he snipped a piece of the net at the Big West Tournament, he received a picture.

Said Satterlund: "I sent it to him and I said, 'Remember when we talked about this?' "I think everybody knew what was possible." 

Women's basketball coach Heidi VanDerveer was one of those people. "The crazy thing is I remember sitting in this gym when we joined the Big West (in 2020) and seeing the excitement around campus. And then obviously we had the COVID situation. But I feel like there's a tsunami wave, and you kind of know it's there, but you don't really know it's there until it hits you, and I feel like that's what our university is experiencing now."

"It's unbelievable," said CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright, who worked with Edwards nearly 40 years ago at Drexel and went on to win two national titles at Villanova. "You can go through teams that have never made the tournament that have been in Div. I for 100 years. So it's impressive."

Patricia Mahaffey, Ed.D., was Dean of Student Affairs at Muir College during both votes and is now Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Life. Sitting in LionTree Arena in March watching the men's and women's basketball selection shows, she expressed happiness for the students of nearly a decade ago who voted for this.

"This is the vision for (those) students," Mahaffey said. "So that's super exciting, because they're getting to see this come to fruition. Our alumni who voted it in, you know, getting to see this happen."

Added Satterlund: "The highest level of competition and excellence gets reflected across every aspect of UC San Diego and the student experience. They see it in the lab, they see it with their faculty, they see it with their peers. And now they get to see it in athletics."

Former athletes took pride in showing what they believed all along: UC San Diego could be excellent in academics … and athletics.

Brett Stuckey, who graduated in 2009 after playing two seasons for the Tritons, pointed to the sign a fan was holding in Denver that noted, "NOBEL LAUREATES" and then had the number 16 under UC San Diego's logo and 10 under Michigan's.

"You think about all of the success that Michigan has had, the famous athletes, some really smart people have come out of there and done some great things in the world, and yet we at UCSD … are better in some ways than that," said Stuckey, who in the past decade served as project engineer with the Triton Ballpark construction and project manager on the LionTree Arena renovation for Turner Construction.

"And to be able to put our name on a map in a public forum through athletics that might get some people wondering, hey what's going on with this surf school in San Diego? Oh, they have a bunch of really smart people and they're doing a lot for climate change and they're doing a lot in the biotech sector and the graduates from there are tremendous individuals for humanity.

"I don't think that type out of attitude is out of the question for people who are watching the games. We're putting UCSD on the map through this forum."

Drew Dyer was a four-year starter in basketball during the time between referendums (2012-16) who in his senior year also served as Triton Athletes' Council president. He credited multiple people in the athletic department – particularly Ken Grosse, then senior associate athletic director – for pushing through the "slow process" of getting another referendum in front of students. 

"When I got there, UC San Diego stood for University of California, Socially Dead, and at times it felt like a commuter school," Dyer said. "There was not a large presence of community. But it's a campus and a place that has all the tools that are required to be an excellent place for education, not just in the classroom.

"I think was the big selling point: This place is great and yes, you can come here and get an incredible education and you can become part of research teams and be pursuing things that are really going to make a difference in this world, but this campus can even take one step further. We could improve this experience for our students even more so by bringing on Division I athletics."

Dyer said as the basketball team had success at the Div. II level, he got a sense the vote could go their way.

"By the time my senior year was coming around," he said, "there was a little bit of that feeling on campus with, 'Hey this is fun. We want to have something that we care about.'"

The vote passed easily, with nearly 70 percent in favor.

"This is an opportunity for us to help improve the student experience on campus, particularly from a pride and unification perspective," Edwards told the UCSD Guardian after the vote. "It will allow alumni the opportunity to be more engaged [and] help us increase our connection to the community."

That certainly seems to have happened with the basketball success this season.

"I think it validates what happened, and I think it will continue to do so, and I think you can see that on campus," Dyer said. "I saw a couple of chancellors at the games, so this obviously has reached people at the highest levels at the university who are seeing the value that it's bringing to campus, just from an attention perspective, a media perspective.

"I wish that every UCSD alumni or former athlete or anything could've felt what it was like in the arena (in Denver). "I thought it was validating to the type of student athlete that UCSD should be proud to have, the type of program that you want to have. I thought it was an amazing representation of what you would want a new program to look like and to me that validates everything."

It wasn't just in Los Angeles and Denver. The excitement on campus was evident, and as Dyer noted, it was not that way a decade ago.

"That is not that long ago in the grand scheme of things," he said, "and I hope that people who have doubts at UCSD or maybe who still have doubts, they see that as validation, too. Like, look at the camaraderie that has been built in just a short period of time through athletics."

About UC San Diego Athletics
After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program has begun a new era as a member of The Big West in NCAA Division I. The 24-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions II and III and helped guide 1,400 scholar-athletes to All-America honors. A total of 83 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 38 have garnered prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 90 percent, the highest rate among public institutions in NCAA Division I or II. For more information on the Tritons, visit UCSDtritons.com or follow UC San Diego Athletics on social media @UCSDtritons.