The Minnesota Golden Gophers are the college sports teams of the University of Minnesota. The university fields a total of 21 teams in both men's and women's sports and competes in the Big Ten Conference.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers football team represents the University of Minnesota in college football at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision level. Founded in 1882, Minnesota has been a member of the Big Ten Conference since its inception in 1896 as the Western Conference. The Golden Gophers claim seven national championships: 1904, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1940, 1941, and 1960. Since 2009, the Golden Gophers have played all their home games at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers men's ice hockey team is the college ice hockey team at the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota. They are members of the Big Ten Conference and compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I ice hockey. The Golden Gophers have won five NCAA national championships, in 1974, 1976, 1979, 2002 and 2003. The team also shared the 1929 National Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship with Yale. and captured the national Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championship for amateur hockey in 1940. The Gophers are currently coached by Bob Motzko. Under Don Lucia the Gophers earned a spot in the NCAA tournament in eight seasons during a nine-year time span, including five number 1 seeds and three appearances in the Frozen Four. The team's main rivalries are with the University of Wisconsin and the University of North Dakota, although several other schools claim Minnesota as their archrival. For much of the team's history, there has been a strong emphasis on recruiting native Minnesotan high school and junior hockey players, as opposed to out-of-state, Canadian, or European players. This helped high school ice hockey grow in Minnesota, particularly starting with Hall of Famer John Mariucci, who refused to recruit players from Canada. Minnesota high school ice hockey programs grew from 26 in 1945 to over 150 in 1980. Head coach Doug Woog championed home-grown talent even more, only recruiting Minnesota players in the late 1980s and 1990s, but recent rosters have been more diversified.
Don Lucia is an American former ice hockey head coach, who was named as inaugural commissioner of the second Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) on June 17, 2020. The CCHA, which is set to start play in the 2021–22 season, is a revival of an NCAA Division I men's hockey conference whose original version operated from 1971 to 2013 before folding in the wake of massive conference realignment in the sport.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball team represents the University of Minnesota in NCAA Division I college basketball competition. The Golden Gophers competes in the Big Ten Conference and play their home games at the Williams Arena.
The 1915 Minnesota Golden Gophers football team represented the University of Minnesota in the 1915 college football season. In their 16th year under head coach Henry L. Williams, the Golden Gophers compiled a 6–0–1 record, tied for the conference championship, and outscored their opponents by a combined total of 191 to 35. The only setback was a tie with Illinois with whom the Gophers shared the conference championship. The team was retroactively selected as the national champion for 1915 by the Billingsley Report.
Richard William Pitino is an American college basketball coach who is the head coach of the New Mexico Lobos men's team. From 2013 to 2021, he was head coach of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball team.
Newton C. Loken was an artistic gymnast and coach of gymnastics, trampolining and cheerleading. While a member of the Minnesota Golden Gophers men's gymnastics team, Loken was NCAA all-around gymnastics champion in 1942 and the Big Ten Conference all-around champion in 1941 and 1942. He was the coach of the University of Michigan gymnastics team for 36 years from 1948-1983. Loken's gymnasts won the NCAA championships in 1963 and 1970, as well as 12 Big Ten championships. His record as Michigan's gymnastics coach was 250-72-1. Loken also coached the Michigan trampolining team to NCAA championships in 1969 and 1970.
Beverly "Bev" Jean Plocki is an American gymnastics coach, and the current coach of the Michigan Wolverines women's gymnastics team. In 32 years as the head coach at Michigan, her teams have a record of 830–263–4 and have won 25 Big Ten Conference championships, and advanced to 25 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships, including 16 straight NCAA championship tournaments from 1993 to 2008. Plocki led her team to the NCAA Championship in 2021, the first championship won by a Big Ten Conference team.
The Florida Gators women's gymnastics team represents the University of Florida in the sport of gymnastics. The team competes in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The Gators host their home matches in the O'Connell Center on the university's Gainesville, Florida campus, and are currently led by head coach Jenny Rowland. The Gators women's gymnastics program has won nine SEC championships, and four national championships: the 1982 AIAW national tournament and the 2013, 2014, and 2015 NCAA championships.
Minnesota Golden Gophers volleyball is the NCAA Division I women's volleyball team at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The program began its first season in 1972 under head coach Dee Jilek. Its current head coach is Keegan Cook, who took over the team at the conclusion of the 2022 season, following the resignation of Hugh McCutcheon. Previous coach Mike Hebert had led the Golden Gophers to every NCAA Tournament, with the exception of 1998, when he was head coach of the team. His tenure was highlighted by back-to-back NCAA Final Four appearances in 2003 and 2004. Hebert also led Minnesota the program's first Big Ten title in 2002.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers represented the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in Division 1 men's gymnastics. They were coached by Head Coach Mike Burns and Assistant Coaches Kostya Kolesnikov and Jordan Valdez. The team's home venue was Maturi Pavilion.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers women's ice hockey team plays for the University of Minnesota at the Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis. The team is one of the members of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in Division I. The Golden Gophers have won six NCAA Championships as well as the final American Women's College Hockey Alliance Championship. In the WCHA, they have also been regular season champions 11 times and tournament champions 7 times. In addition to their overall success as a competitive team, the Gophers have also been ranked in the nation's top two teams for attendance since becoming a varsity sport, and the team holds the second largest single-game attendance record for women's collegiate hockey, drawing 6,854 fans for the first Minnesota women's hockey game on November 2, 1997. The team also holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in women's or men's college hockey at 62 games from February 17, 2012 to November 17, 2013, winning back-to-back NCAA titles during the stretch.
Laura Halldorson is an American retired women's college ice hockey player and head coach. She was the first head coach of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers Women's Hockey team, leading the new team to national prominence in her ten seasons. Her Minnesota record was 278–67–22, a winning percentage of .787. During that time, the Gophers won three national championships and four Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) championships, averaged 28 wins per season, and appeared in eight of ten national championship tournaments.
Jenny Hansen is an American stuntwoman and retired gymnast from Somerset, Wisconsin. Born in 1973, Hansen won three consecutive NCAA All-Around Championships between 1993 and 1995, the only person to ever win three straight All-Around titles. She attended the University of Kentucky from 1992 until 1996 and has since been named to the UK's Athletic Hall of Fame. Hansen won a total of eight national titles and nine Southeastern Conference championships during her collegiate career. She was a three-time winner of the Honda Sports Award in gymnastics. She is a thirteen time All-American and was named the Most Outstanding Gymnast over the past 25 years of NCAA competition in 2006.
The Michigan Wolverines men's gymnastics team represents the University of Michigan and competes in the Big Ten Conference. The Wolverines have won seven NCAA championships, 20 Big Ten championships and have been invited to 31 NCAA tournaments. Since 1999, Michigan has finished in the Super Six at the NCAA tournament in 11 of 12 seasons. In 2013, Michigan won its fifth NCAA men's gymnastics team championship. The following year, Michigan repeated as National Champions for its sixth NCAA men's gymnastics team championship.
Jessica Lynne Allister is an American softball coach and former catcher who is the current head coach at Stanford. Allister played college softball at Stanford and earned second-team All-American honors in her senior season of 2004. After a two-year professional softball career with the New England Riptide of National Pro Fastpitch, Allister began a coaching career as an assistant coach at Georgia, Stanford, and Oregon.
The 2016–17 Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball team represented the University of Minnesota in the 2016–17 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The Gophers, led by fourth-year head coach Richard Pitino, were members of the Big Ten Conference and played their home games at Williams Arena in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They finished the season 24–10, 11–7 in Big Ten play to finish in fourth place. In the Big Ten tournament, they beat Michigan State in the quarterfinals before losing to Michigan in the semifinals. They received an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament as a No. 5 seed. The bid marked their first trip to the Tournament since 2013. In the First Round, they lost to No. 12-seeded Middle Tennessee.
The 2020–21 Minnesota Golden Gophers women's basketball team represented the University of Minnesota during the 2020–21 NCAA Division I women's basketball season. The Golden Gophers, led by third-year head coach Lindsay Whalen, played their home games at Williams Arena and were members of the Big Ten Conference.
Linda Marie Wells is a former American softball coach. She previously served as the head coach for the Minnesota Golden Gophers softball and Arizona State Sun Devils softball teams.
