By Drew Buono
The Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) is considered a mid-major conference that people don’t know much about, which is quite a contrast from the likes of conferences such as the Big East, ACC and Pac-10.
The CAA though, has been around for over 20 years and has produced almost 50 individual and team champions for Division-I sports in the NCAA. In fact, the CAA has also produced many players who not only went on to play professional sports, but also excelled at them.
The CAA has 12 members-George Mason University, James Madison University, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the College of William & Mary, University of Delaware, Drexel University, Towson University, Georgia State University, Northeastern University and the Pride-and all of these schools have not been around since the inception of the conference. However, they all do add to the legacy of the league and make it stronger with the induction of each new team.
The United States Naval Academy was one of the original members of the CAA back in 1983, when the league only participated in basketball.
The star of the early CAA league was Navy center David Robinson. Robinson, as most sports enthusiasts know, was a member of the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA, where he was the league MVP in 1995 and was a member of two of the Spurs’ world championship teams in 1999 and 2003.
Paul Evans was Robinson’s coach for his first three seasons and describes Robinson as a great player with room to grow.
“David became a great player while in college and what was astounding was his learning abilities on the court especially since, he only had one year of high school experience,” Evans said. “It was like coaching an eighth grader with no bad habits. He was 6-foot-7 when we recruited him and could run the floor very easily. He eventually grew to seven feet and still had the same athletic ability.”
With his lack of high school experience, Robinson was limited on what he could do early in his career. Evans describes this as one of the reasons why the team ran certain plays most of the game.
“We played a lot of zone and kept him on the left block so he could turn base line and bank the shot in,” he said. “He also did a great job coming from the corner spot in the zone to block shots.” In all, Evans described Robinson as a player with a great attitude in great shape with a willingness to learn.
From a player of one of the original schools in the CAA to one from recent addition Northeastern came Major League Baseball player Carlos Pena. Pena is a first baseman for the Detroit Tigers and has been in the league since 2001, bouncing around the minors and the main stage over that time. Pena transferred to Northeastern after his freshman year at Wright State.
According to Northeastern head coach Neil McPhee, Pena “Made an immediate impact in our program, not only on the field but as an engineering student as well. Carlos was the complete student athlete, who understood what it took for a young person to define goals and how to prepare to reach them. He combined an incredible work ethic with talent and a charismatic personality, which helped him become one of the most respected and liked athletes ever at Northeastern.”
McPhee added, ”He ranks as one of the most physically talented athletes I have ever coached, yet what separates Carlos is the character he possesses as a person.”
Delaware was one of three schools that joined the CAA the same year the Pride did, and Bryan Barrett was a member of the lacrosse team at Delaware from 1998 until 2001. Bob Shillinglaw has been the head coach at Delaware for almost 30 years and remarks that Barrett is, “One of those American players that can make it in the predominately Canadian National Lacrosse League.” Barrett currently plays defense for the Philadelphia Wings in the NLL.
According to Shillinglaw, Barrett had a strong physical make-up that has helped him in the pros. Shillinglaw however, didn’t originally think this of Barrett, noting that he sat out his freshman year because he needed more conditioning to be able to handle playing on the college. However, after that freshman year he excelled, becoming a pre-season All-American and captain in his junior year.
“It’s not easy playing a sport where you have practice a couple days a week,” Shillinglaw said. “Then you play one of two games on the weekend and finally go to your other job at the medical supply company on Monday because you can’t make enough money playing lacrosse, but you do it because you love the game.”
Carlos Pena plays first base for the Detroit Tigers and played at Northeastern University in the CAA.