Athletics and Recreation
Whether you like to watch sports or participate in them, UMass Amherst is a great school for athletics.
UMass Amherst Athletics: Ignite Your Spirit
If you like to sit in the stands and cheer, you won’t run out of opportunities at UMass Amherst. Our varsity athletes compete in Division I, the NCAA’s highest level of intercollegiate athletic competition and in the prestigious Atlantic 10 Conference. The Mullins Center, a state-of-the-art facility with 9,000 seats, is home to men’s hockey, and our men and women’s basketball teams. It provides a real home court advantage, with our athletes emerging victorious in almost 80% of home games played.
Our enthusiastic student body adds directly to this success. In a typical year, about 200 varsity events are held on campus —and UMass Amherst students attend all home games free of charge. Proudly wearing UMass Amherst maroon, the campus community joins the Marching Band, the Maroon Platoon, our cheerleaders, and MinutemanSam (our mascot), in cheering, singing, and dancing.
Athletic Honors
UMass Amherst was recently selected to the U.S. News College Sports Honor Roll, which recognized 20 schools nationally with the best overall rankings across four categories of achievement: Graduation rates, gender equity, win/loss records, and sport sponsorship.
A member of the Atlantic 10, Hockey East and the ECAC, UMass Amherst has captured six of the last nine A-10 Commissioner's Cups, an honor which recognizes the league’s best overall athletic program. In 2000-01, Massachusetts made A-10 history by becoming the first school to sweep the men’s, women’s, and overall divisions of the Commissioner’s Cup in the same year.
Athletics Greats
UMass Amherst has produced more academic all-conference selections than any other Atlantic 10 school, and has led the league in academic all-conference picks seven times in the last 10 years. When our athletes graduate they go on to do us proud and prove the strength of UMass Amherst’s athletic tradition.
UMass Amherst Athletics Alumni:
- NBA greats Julius “Dr. J.” Erving and Al Skinner
- World Cup Soccer Champion Briana Scurry
- Gold Medal Softball Olympian Danielle Henderson
- Olympic rower Sarah Jones
- Stephen Werner of the Washington Capitols (NHL)
- Thomas Pöck of the New York Rangers (NHL)
- Marcel Shipp of the Arizona Cardinals (NFL)
- Ron Villone of the Houston Astros (MLB)
