The 20 most memorable and outstanding teams, athletes and moments of the last 20 years (No. 20-16)

As the curtain falls on 2020, Millersville University’s athletic communications staff looked back at the last 20 years and counted 14 PSAC Championships and more than 70 All-Americans for the Marauders. But championships and awards become titles, trophies, and words on a wall. There are real people with fantastic stories and accomplishments that are too frequently overlooked or forgotten--lost to history and later discovered as a faceless name on a list. It’s time to remember 20 of the most memorable and outstanding teams, athletes and moments of the last 20 years. 

Admittedly, this list is arbitrary and likely incomplete. There is no formula or criteria to share. Making the cut at 20, loads of worthy teams and athletes are left off the list. That doesn’t make those accomplishments any less meaningful. It’s impossible to compare a team championship to a record-setting career to a one-game, one-day performance. This list isn’t about an official ranking. It’s about memories. 

This is part one of four.  

20. NEARLY PERFECT TO PERFECTION  

Chris Murphy throws a no-hitter and perfect game (2013)

Chris Murphy came to Millersville after a freshman season at Division I TCU where his 7.71 ERA in 7.0 innings were rather unremarkable. Jon Shehan remembers that in the fall of 2012, Murphy wasn’t as good as he expected, and when the 2013 season started, Murphy slotted in as Millersville’s No. 3 starter. But what set Murphy apart was his ability to compete. “He absolutely loved to beat people,” Shehan recalled. He won his first two starts as a Marauder, beating perennial regional qualifier Winston-Salem State and nationally-ranked West Florida. 

Then, on Feb. 24, on a bitterly cold day in Glenville, W.Va., Murphy mowed down the first 15 overmatched Glenville State hitters in order and took a perfect game into the bottom of the sixth where he struck out the first two batters of the inning for nine punch outs in the previous 11 batters. Then, a grounder to then-freshman shortstop Tyler Orris kicked off his glove into the outfield. The error ended the perfect game bid. Unphased, however, Murphy struck out the next batter and went 1-2-3 in the seventh for the fourth no-hitter in Millersville history. Ironically, Orris went on to set the PSAC record for career assists and become one of the great shortstops in the league’s history. He more than made amends in his career. And as it turns out, that start wasn’t a singular performance for Murphy. 

Two starts and three weeks later, pitching at home against Clarion, Murphy threw the first and only perfect game in Millersville history. He needed just 64 pitches in seven innings. To put the feat into perspective, it was, at the time, the 18th perfect game in Division II history, dating back to 1967. It was the first in Division II in four years and the first by a PSAC pitcher in 14 years. As best we can tell, no PSAC pitcher had ever thrown two no-hitters in a career, let alone a no-hitter and a perfect game over the course of four starts. Murphy was selected to the Millersville Athletics Hall of Fame earlier this year. 

19. A REMARKABLE RISE

Women's soccer reaches the NCAA Tournament for the first time (2018)

As sports at Millersville go, women’s soccer is youthful. While women’s basketball has been played for more than 100 years, soccer just recently hit its 25th anniversary, and not many of those 25 years have been tremendously successful. Entering the 2018 season, the women’s soccer program had produced just seven winning seasons. The opportunity to turn the fortunes of the program fell to alum Matt Procopio, who less than a decade earlier had been an outstanding defender for the men’s soccer team that won a regional championship in 2008. He officially started the job just days before fall camp in 2015, and those first three seasons were a slow, methodical building process with as many setbacks as successes: 5-12, 7-10, 6-9-2. Then, in 2018, it all clicked. 

The Marauders were voted 13th in the PSAC’s preseason poll, but led by Kay Liebl’s 42 points and the all-region defense of Paige Mancini, the Marauders went 14-4, tied the school record for wins and reached the PSAC Tournament for the first time in 15 years. The team earned the program’s first national ranking in five years and climbed as high as No. 14—its best-ever ranking at the time. The Marauders scored a key 3-2 win over Lock Haven late in the regular season in which Liebl scored three second-half goals, rallying from two separate deficits. That win all but clinched a feat even more monumental—a trip to the NCAA Tournament. 

It was the program’s first trip to the national tournament, and that 2018 team subsequently set the stage for the 2019 team to break the school record for wins and score its first NCAA Tournament victory. While the future shines bright for Procopio’s program, the 2018 team can always say it paved the way. 

18. RECORD-SETTING CAREERS CUT OFF BY A PANDEMIC

Softball’s Faith Willenbrock and basketball’s Lauren Lister etched their names in the record books before a pandemic took away sports

You can read Willenbrock’s long list of accomplishments here, and Lister’s you can find here. What sets these two athletes apart is how little time they needed to make history at Millersville. 

Before Willenbrock arrived at Seaber Softball Stadium, the career record for home runs stood at 16. Willenbrock hit 14 as a rookie (leading the PSAC), and 11 more as a sophomore. She has two of the three best RBI seasons in program history and two of the top six seasons for slugging percentage. And she’s played only two seasons in black and gold. As a member of the Millersville R.O.T.C., Willenbrock’s playing career is hard capped at four seasons. Immediately after graduation, she starts her commission with the United States Army. That’s why it was such a blow when her junior season was limited to four games because of COVID-19, and her senior season, once again affected by the pandemic, is currently set at 42 games--a decreased total because of the elimination of spring break games. 

The 2020 season stands as one of the great what-ifs in Millersville history. Willenbrock recovered from offseason shoulder surgery in record time, and it didn’t seem to affect her one bit. She hit a home run and drove in four in her return to the lineup and hit another home run in the next game. When the call came to cancel the season, Willenbrock boasted a .462 batting average and had just won the PSAC East Athlete of the Week Award. Her career batting average is already the best all-time. She’s already established as the top hitter in program history, and she’ll get this one more season. But what would four have looked like? 

Similarly, Lister became Millersville’s all-time scoring leader in just three seasons before the pandemic stole 2020-21. The points record is THE record in basketball, especially in a program rich in tradition like Millersville’s. Lister scored 1,646 points in just 83 games—an average of 19.8 per game. The previous record, set by Sara Burcin, stood for 16 years. Burcin played in 29 more games that Lister. 

Lister’s scoring career scoring average is a full 5.0 points per game higher than any other player in program history. Lister memorably broke the scoring record with a career-high 41 points against Shippensburg. 

17. RECORDS MADE TO BE BROKEN

Liz Weekley and Sabrina Fusco smash scoring records

An unstoppable force in the spring of 2008, Liz Weekley scored 68 goals for the women’s lacrosse team, breaking a record held for 19 years by hall of famer Cherie Meiklejohn. She scored at least one goal in each of Millersville’s 15 games and scored eight in a game twice. Weekley went on to finish her career with 171 goals and 225 points—Millersville’s new all-time scoring leader. 

But five years later, Sabrina Fusco arrived at Millersville. While both proved equally effective with offensive production, they were very different players. Weekley scored with power and speed. Fusco, according to former head coach Mia Hall, was a “quintessential lax rat.” She watched tons of film, and thrived because of her lacrosse IQ, timing and feel for the game. She totaled at least 60 points in each of her first three seasons—the first to ever accomplish that feat. 

Then, as a senior, Fusco scored 71 goals to top Weekley’s single-season and career goals records. But to do so, Fusco needed every single one of her 17 games that season, and she needed an epic performance in the season finale against Seton Hill. She entered the game four goals shy of Weekley’s 68. Fusco scored five in the first half and two more in the second, finishing the game with seven goals—one shy of her season high. 

16. AN UNLIKELY CHAMPION

Women’s golf rises from humble beginnings to PSAC Champions (2015)

Women’s golf officially became an intercollegiate athletic sport at Millersville in the fall of 2009. The first roster included four golfers. The following season, the team had three golfers. Starting any program from scratch can be a challenge, and that was the case for Scott Vandegrift, who split his time between the start-up and an established men’s team. At the time, an estimated 78,000 females played high school golfers in the United States. By comparison, there were well over 400,000 female basketball players and more than 300,000 softball players. With more than 900 other schools competing for a limited field of golfers, the recruiting trail was often unfriendly for a program with no reputation. To post a team score in golf, a team must have four players finish a round. The team is permitted to start five golfers and count their best four scores. In the first four years of the program’s existence, the team participated in 31 tournaments and recorded a team score just six times. From 2009-2014, Millersville posted a team finish at the PSAC Championship three times. Its best finish in that span was a seventh out of nine. 

Then, in the fall of 2015, Vandegrift added outstanding freshman Danielle Greene to the prior season’s top recruit, Shannon Weber. Jaimie Wharton, a junior at the time, had been Vandegrift’s top signee for the the 2013-14 season. Golfers like Danielle Freed made constant improvements under Vandegrift’s tutelage. In the second tournament of the 2015 season, Millersville topped a field of 16 teams for its most significant tournament win to date. The Marauders beat 15 teams in the next tournament and 15 more the following week for three consecutive first-place finishes. Out of nowhere, Millersville women’s golf had become a team to reckon with. The Marauders rolled into Hershey Country Club with momentum, but a conference championship for a team that had never come close to contending before seemed improbable. California (Pa.) dominated the event in that era, winning five of the previous seven. 

The first round saw Millersville race to a five-shot lead over the defending champs, but on day two, every single shot would matter. California rallied with a team score of 315. Weber, who held a one-shot lead for medalist honors after round one, sank a par putt on the 18th hole and walked off the course knowing she had bested Cal’s Diana Munoz by one shot for medalist honors, but no one was certain of the team result. Freed, the Marauders’ third player to finish, carded a career-best 80-82 and made a brilliant up-and-down with a 15-foot par putt on her final hole. As the results were tabulated, the team huddled around the leaderboard. When Cal’s Cara Vanderham’s 79 posted, Millersville’s golfers hugged and cried, knowing they had won the unlikeliest of PSAC championships. 

Greene, a rookie who would go on to an outstanding career, placed sixth. Wharton, who just two years before played the PSAC Championship as an individual because she didn’t have enough teammates for a team score, placed 15th. Freed surprised the team with a 12th-place finish. 

"I never thought it would happen this quickly," said Vandegrift after the win. Nobody did.