*This article first appeared in The Muse’s 75th Anniversary Print Supplement magazine, published January 2026.
1969: Year of champions
The Muse sports reporters must have had a blast covering sports in 1969.
The men’s soccer team was accepted into the Maritime Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA), where they completed the season with a perfect 6-0 record and won the MIAA championship in their first-ever season.
Not only was MUN the top team in Atlantic Canada, but The Muse reporter who wrote this story believed that MUN could have competed with the very best teams in Canada, writing: “It is unfortunate that Memorial didn’t get a chance to play the top teams from the rest of Canada, but soccer is apparently considered a minor sport, and no national playoffs are held. Memorial may not have the best university soccer team in the country, but if not, they aren’t far from being the best, and we hope that next year they might get a chance to prove it.”
Men’s soccer was not the only team at MUN to see high levels of success.
The women’s swimming team was the Atlantic Canadian champion, led by captain Brenda Duff. As The Muse reported, coach Levinson said she was “very impressed with the team’s performance,” which consisted mostly of first-years.
Memorial’s men’s wrestling team also had an excellent year, winning its third consecutive MIAA championship, securing the title convincingly over the Dalhousie Tigers.
1969 was also the year of… fencing? MUN completely swept both men’s and women’s maritime fencing championships. Tina Mardel led the
way with an impressive showcase, winning a gold in her individual competition, and Keith Kelloway also placed first.
Swimming dynasty of the 80s
In the 1980s, Memorial was the program to beat in men’s swimming.
Entering the 1986 Atlantic University Sport championships, MUN was looking to win its fourth straight title. The team did so in a heated
road environment hosted by its rivals, Dalhousie. MUN men’s swimming coach Ralph Wheeler told The Muse before they headed to Halifax that it was “going to be tough for Memorial.”
Dalhousie had a full team of 18 swimmers, 11 of whom had competed in the championships before, giving them a massive advantage over Memorial’s team of nine swimmers, three of which competed previously.
While Wheeler was expecting a challenge, he was confident in his team’s ability to persevere and come out on top, which is exactly what Memorial would go on to do.
Memorial won its fourth consecutive AUS men’s swimming title, proving to the rest of Atlantic Canada that its athletes were among the best in the country.
Women’s basketball dominance
Between the mid-90s and late 2000s, the Memorial Sea-Hawks women’s basketball team was an absolute force to be reckoned with. A consistent playoff team, they won seven titles between 1994 and 2008.
Their first-ever championship came in the 1994-95 season, where they defeated the University of Prince Edward Island Panthers. MUN finished the regular season with a 12-8 record before upsetting the first-seeded Dalhousie Tigers in the playoffs, which helped them advance to the finals.
Their matchup against UPEI was a close contest, where MUN ultimately won 60-57, thanks to a 20-point performance from league MVP Michelle Healey. After the game, she told The Muse what it meant to win both a championship and an MVP: “the number one goal was to win the championship. This was just icing on the cake.”
This win jump-started an extremely successful stretch of Memorial women’s basketball dominance and is one of the most impactful moments in Sea-Hawks history.
New century, new championships
The Sea-Hawk women kicked the 2000s off with a bang, as both the women’s basketball and volleyball teams took home respective championships.
After finishing the regular season with a 9-11 record and clinching the second-to-last playoff spot, the Sea-Hawks entered the playoffs as underdogs. They ultimately won their second championship ever, defeating UPEI in the final 53-39.
They were led by playoff MVP Erica Coultas, while Ann Murrin scored 18 points in the final.
In a recap of the final game, Muse sports writer Colin Farrell said that “MUN put forth a gutsy effort in knocking off the defending champs.”
A few weeks prior, the MUN women’s volleyball team won its third-ever championship, after it completed the regular
season with a perfect 18-0 record, placing first in the league.
This first-place finish gave MUN a bye straight into the semi-finals, something Sea-Hawks head coach Karen Murphy told Muse reporter Chad Holloway offered “little advantage,” explaining that “we could be playing any one of three teams, which makes preparing for Saturday tough.”
Nonetheless, the Sea-Hawks managed to persevere in a close 3-2 win over Acadia, before defeating the University of Moncton in the finals,
3-1. Both Susan Mosher and Susan Penney were named tournament MVPs.
Women’s soccer wins first championship
In 2014, the Sea-Hawks earned another AUS banner, thanks to their women’s soccer team claiming their first-ever AUS title.
They did so by finishing in second place in the AUS and earning a bye into the semi-finals, winning a thrilling penalty shootout over Cape Breton in the semi-finals, and defeating the top-seeded UNB Reds 3-1 in the finals.
This win allowed MUN to participate in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport women’s soccer tournament, where they would lose their first
matchup in an overtime thriller to the Fraser University Cascades 2-1.
Muse sports editor Scott Wood recapped MUN women’s first-ever CIS tournament game, saying that the season “came at last to a close
– but not without a ferocious effort from each and every player on the pitch.”
Following MUN’s loss to the Cascades, Wood wrote, “It was a jarring end to the competitive season for the Sea- Hawks, who really laid it all on the line in this match.”