Last week I had the opportunity to celebrate our student-athletes at the Fall Graduation Reception. 21 student-athletes completed their final requirements for graduation, including student-athletes from nine different teams, nine different states and six different countries. Our winter graduates combined for a 3.31 GPA and earned 16 bachelor’s and five master’s degrees. A special thanks to Tara Evans and the entire staff of the Nancy & Donald Resnick Academic Support Center for Student-Athletes and all that they do to help our students be successful in the classroom!

2023 Fall Graduates

Jasha Clinton - Women’s Basketball

Aleah Nelson - Women’s Basketball

Rayne Tucker Rayne - Women’s Basketball

Adam Love - Men’s Crew

Erik Kain - Men’s Cross Country

Emma Pincus - Fencing

Caitlyn Amsden - Field Hockey

Molly Frey - Field Hockey

Joseph Appiah Darkwa - Football

Jermaine Donaldson - Football

James Faminu - Football

Dominick Hill - Football

Gage Panno - Football

Quincy Patterson - Football

Camden Price - Football

Chris Van Eekeren - Football

Valeriia Demateva - Women’s Rowing

Andrew Burkhardt - Men’s Soccer

Ferran Vera Filella - Men’s Soccer

Evie Wei - Women’s Tennis

Today marks National Signing Day for Football and Owls head coach Stan Drayton announced the signing of 23 student-athletes for the 2024 season. The class includes a mix of eight high school recruits, eight Junior College transfers and seven transfer portal players. While seven players come from Temple’s footprint of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the DMV, the class also featured recruits from high school hotbeds such as California (four), Florida (one), Georgia (three), and Texas (one). There were also two international players - from (Germany and Sweden).

As college athletics continues to face many changes at an unprecedented speed, NCAA President Charlie Baker sent a letter to the Division I membership outlining his recommendations for the future of the division, with the goal of creating conversation and engagement around the proposed changes. Temple, like most schools around the country, is engaged in discussions regarding this letter at both the conference and University level. Click HERE to see the proposal.

The American Athletic Conference announced its conference schedule for the 2024 season on Dec. 13. Our Owls will host Army, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, and Tulsa while making road trips to East Carolina, Navy, UTSA, and Tulane. Dates of the matchups are expected to be finalized and announced in February.

Temple Fencing opens the New Year with its first-ever foreign trip. Our Owls, under the direction of v tg8ihead coach Jennie Salmon, head to Italy on January 2 for a week of training at Club Scherma in Rome. Click HERE to support our nationally-ranked Owls as they embark on this incredible athletic and educational journey.

Holiday shopping is here and so is Temple’s Official NIL Store. The store features officially licensed NIL merchandise opportunities for every Temple student-athlete. The Temple NIL Store is every fan’s one-stop-shop to support their favorite Temple student-athletes and place industry-leading payments directly into their pockets. All merchandise on the Temple NIL Store is officially licensed by Temple University.

Men’s Basketball won two of its three games since the last newsletter, defeating Bloomsburg and Albany before falling at VCU. At 6-4 overall, our Owls head to Honolulu to take part in the Diamond Head Classic starting tomorrow against Nevada at 3 pm on ESPNU.

Women’s Basketball is on a three-game win streak with victories over Penn, Delaware, and La Salle to improve to 6-5 on the season. Come out tomorrow (Dec. 21) to catch our special matinee School Day game (11 am) against Northwestern at the Liacouras Center.

Women’s Track competed at the Fast Time Before Finals Meet hosted by Lehigh on Dec. 9. Nya Browne (60m hurdles), Amira Green (high jump), and Inara Shell (long jump) won their events while Green, Allyson Metzger (60m), Jade Pope (500m), and Aliza White-Vega (pole vault) set personal bests. Green’s mark of 1.75m is just .09m short of Temple’s school record and ranks 20th nationally.

Special shoutout to our Athlete of the Week since our last edition of From The Nest: Men’s Basketball –Zion Stanford named AAC Freshman of the Week (12/11); Football - David Martin-Robinson, Jordan Magee and Tywan Francis were named to the 2023 Division I FBS All-ECAC team; Women’s Basketball – Aleah Nelson named Big 5 Player of the Week and OwlSports.com Athlete of the Week (12/18); Ines Piper named OwlSports.com Athlete of the Week (12/11).

Temple Talk with Adam Fisher debuted on Nov. 2 (6-7 pm) at Maxi’s Pizza, Subs and Bar which is located on the Temple University main campus. (1926 Liacouras Walk). The 12-episode show airs live on The Varsity Network App and is tape-delayed on 1210 AM WPHT, the home of Temple Basketball. Temple Women’s Basketball will be featured on each show with second-year head coach Diane Richardson and players talking about their season.

Reminder that ESPN+ is the home of Temple Athletics. Watch Temple athletics events via an ESPN+ subscription.

Please come out and continue to support all our Temple Athletics teams. Below is a link to our composite schedule.

Missed an edition? See all past newsletters HERE.