POSTED: Friday, Jul. 09, 2010

Vikings celebrate decade of excellence

During the past decade, Western Washington University has enjoyed more athletic success than in any previous decade in school history.

The Vikings twice were ranked in the top 10 among nearly 300 NCAA Division II schools in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings and were among the top 45 schools eight times.

They were Great Northwest Athletic Conference all-sports champions six times during the first decade of the 21st century and had more team and individual national champions and national participants, All-Americans and national scholar-athletes than at any other time in their past.

Western wouldn't have come close to that level of success without some outstanding student athletes, and none were better than rower Audrey Coon, volleyball libero Courtney Schneider, men's basketball forward Grant Dykstra and football punter/placekicker Michael Koenen.

Those four standouts shared the honors as the Vikings' Female and Male Athletes of the Decade, according to a press release from the school's athletic department.

Coon captained the WWU rowers to their fifth consecutive NCAA Division II title and was part of three national titles during her career at Western.

Schneider set national, conference and school records for career digs while helping the Vikings reach the NCAA Division II Tournament championship match in 2007.

Dykstra, who graduated from Lynden Christian, is the Vikings' leading career scorer and also finds his name near the top of a number of other all-time lists for the men's basketball team. He also won the V Foundation Comeback Award in 2006.

Koenen was a standout punter and field goal kicker from Ferndale who set numerous records and earned a number of awards before moving on to become the Atlanta Falcons' punter.

AUDREY COON

Sport: Rowing

Years: 2006-09

Hometown: Kenai, Alaska

What she did: Coon captained the national champion WWU rowing team in 2009, helping the Vikings to their fifth straight NCAA II national title, the first time that feat had been accomplished in any NCAA rowing division. It was Coon's third national championship. Western's varsity eight finished the season with 10 wins in 10 races. Among those triumphs were victories at nationals, the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championship Regatta, the unofficial NCAA II West Regional and the Northwest Collegiate Rowing Conference (NCRC) Championships. Coon was named a Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association All-American in 2010 and for the third straight time a CRCA National Scholar-Athlete. An NCRC all-star, Coon rowed with a U.S. development team during the summer of 2009, winning gold medals in the open lightweight eight and intermediate lightweight four and a silver medal in the intermediate pair. Coon was a first-team ESPN The Magazine/College Sports Information Directors of America College Division Women's At-Large Academic All-American after being a second-team pick the previous year. Coon also was a ESPN The Magazine/CoSIDA District 8 and Great Northwest Athletic Conference at-large academic all-star, both for the third time. An NCAA Woman of the Year nominee, Coon is currently attending the National Outdoor Leadership School in Vernal, Utah, where she is taking a month-long outdoor education course designed to expose students to the theory and practice of outdoor leadership, teamwork and expedition behavior.

COURTNEY SCHNEIDER

Sport: Volleyball

Years: 2004-07

Hometown: Snohomish

What she did: Schneider finished third nationally among NCAA Division II career dig leaders with a Great Northwest Athletic Conference and school-record four-year total of 2,695. Her 7.00 career digs per game average was a national record by nearly one per game. Schneider was a first-team American Volleyball Coaches Association and second-team Daktronics All-American in 2007, helping Western to a 26-5 record, a GNAC crown and a Pacific Regional title, as the Vikings reached the NCAA Division II national championship match. She also was a first-team AVCA and Daktronics Pacific Region all-star and a unanimous first-team GNAC all-star, each for the third straight year. She led the nation in digs per game for the second consecutive season with a NCAA record average of 7.74. The 2007 GNAC Player of the Year, Schneider was a NCAA Division II Elite Eight and Pacific Regional all-tournament pick that season. She set an NCAA Division II tournament record with 44 digs against Washburn (Kansas) and established a league and school record earlier in the year with 50 digs against Central Washington. Schneider led the GNAC for four consecutive years in digs with a league and school record of 851 as a senior. Schneider was a second-team ESPN The Magazine/CoSIDA Academic All-District VIII and GNAC academic all-star for two straight years. An NCAA Woman of the Year nominee, Schneider will be a graduate assistant coach for Western this fall after helping out at NCAA Division I Idaho last year.

GRANT DYKSTRA

Sport: Men's basketball

Years: 2002-06

Hometown: Everson

What he did: The 6-foot-4 Dykstra ended his four-year career as Western's all-time scoring leader with 1,844 points, and was fourth in assists with 404, sixth in rebounds with 576 and seventh in steals with 210. A graduate of Lynden Christian, Dykstra was a consensus All-American as a senior at WWU during the 2005-06 campaign, being named to four different all-star teams after helping the Vikings to the West Regional championship game. That season, he ranked ninth nationally in 3-point makes per game (3.4), setting a school record with 101 treys. Dykstra averaged 20.6 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 2.0 steals. He shot 50.6 percent from the field, including 43.7 percent from 3-point range and 84.5 percent at the free throw line. Making Dykstra's accomplishments all that more incredible was that he survived a life-threatening childhood accident that nearly cost him his right arm. Dykstra won the V Foundation Comeback Award in 2006, becoming the first non-Division I student-athlete to do so, and received the United States Basketball Writers Association Most Courageous Award in 2005. Dykstra's right arm was mangled in a grain auger when he was 2 and required 16 surgeries over the next 10 years and countless hours of physical therapy to regain strength and movement. The arm is five inches shorter than his left, but he taught himself to shoot a basketball left-handed and learned to dribble with either hand. Dykstra is in his fifth year as a Business Services Loan Officer at the Whatcom Educational Credit Union in Bellingham.

MICHAEL KOENEN

Sport: Football

Years: 2001-04

Hometown: Ferndale

What he did: Koenen ranked among the top four nationally in punting in each of his final three years at Western from 2002 to 2004. He led the country as a sophomore with a school-record 44.9 average, including a school-best punt of 73 yards. He was fourth as a junior at 43.4 and third as a senior at 43.5. A graduate of Ferndale High School, Koenen was named an All-American, either preseason or postseason, in each of those years, being a first-team D2Football.com, Football Gazette and Daktronics choice in 2002 as well as a second-team Associated Press Little All-American. He set school career records for punting average (43.1 average), made PATs (143), consecutive PATs (44) and kickoffs for touchbacks (73); season standards for made PATs (43), consecutive field goals (8) and punting average (44.9) and game marks for PATs made (9) and longest field goal (54 yards). Koenen was a four-time national special teams Player of the Week and was selected the D2football.com Northwest Region Special Teams Player of the Year in 2004. He was a four-time GNAC all-star as a placekicker and a two-time first-team pick as a punter. Koenen was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2005 by the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, and is entering his sixth season handling punting duties as well as having kickoff and field goal responsibilities on occasion. Against New England on Oct. 9, 2005, he kicked a 58-yard field goal, the ninth longest in NFL history.