The Southeast Missouri State Redhawks are the athletic teams of

Southeast Missouri State University Southeast Missouri State University (Southeast or SEMO) is a public university in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In addition to the main campus, the university has four regional campuses offering full degree programs and a secondary campus housing t ...

(SEMO), located in Cape Girardeau,

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

, United States. The Redhawks athletic program is a member of the

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in partnership with ...

(OVC) and competes at the

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...

level including the

Football Championship Subdivision The NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly known as Division I-AA, is the second-highest level of college football in the United States, after the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, Football Bowl Subdivision (F ...

. The SEMO mascot is Rowdy the Redhawk and the school colors are red and black.

Sports sponsored

Southeast Missouri State was a charter member of the Division II athletic conference

Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association The Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Its fourteen me ...

(MIAA) from 1912 until moving to Division I and joining the OVC in 1991. Before January 2005, the athletic team nicknames were the "Indians" (men's teams) and "Otahkians" (women's teams), and the University's mascot was known as Chief Sagamore, represented by a student dressed in Native American regalia. Chief Sagamore was retired as mascot in the mid-1980s due to a growing cultural sensitivity to Native American mascots, but the team names lasted for nearly 20 more years. After a movement by Student Government, the Booster Club and the National Alumni Council, those names were officially retired in a ceremony on October 22, 2004, and replaced with "Redhawks." A member of the

, Southeast Missouri State University sponsors six men's and nine women's teams in

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

sanctioned sports:

National championships

The Redhawks have won one team NCAA national championship, at the Division II level.

Team

Individual teams

Basketball

The men's basketball team won a share of the regular season OVC title in 2000, and won the conference's tournament as well that year to earn an automatic bid to the 2000 NCAA Tournament. In the team's first appearance in "The Big Dance", the Redhawks were seeded #13 in the West Region and set to face off against

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as Louisiana State University (LSU), is an American Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louis ...

in the opening round of the tournament. In an exciting game, 4th-seeded

LSU Tigers The LSU Tigers and Lady Tigers (also known as the Fighting Tigers) are the athletic teams representing Louisiana State University (LSU), a state university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. LSU competes in Division I of the National Collegiat ...

narrowly escaped the upset as they held off the Indians 64–61. The current head coach, as of the 2020-21 season, is Brad Korn. On March 4, 2023, the RedHawks held off

Tennessee Tech Tennessee Technological University (commonly referred to as Tennessee Tech) is a public research university in Cookeville, Tennessee. It was formerly known as Tennessee Polytechnic Institute, and before that as University of Dixie, the name unde ...

89-82 in OT where they won the OVC’s automatic bid to “The Big Dance”, going there for just the second time in program history.

Football

The football team has also had its struggles since moving up to Division I-AA (now Division I FCS) in 1991, having only 4 winning seasons (1994, 2000, 2010, 2018). The football program finally had some redemption during the 2002 season as the team made it into the I-AA polls for the first time, finishing the season ranked #23 in the ESPN/USA Today I-AA poll and #24 in the Sports Network I-AA poll. That season also produced the school's only win over a I-A opponent since moving to I-AA, as the Redhawks topped

Middle Tennessee Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the state's capital an ...

24–14 in

Murfreesboro, Tennessee Murfreesboro is a city in Rutherford County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Its population was 165,430 according to the 2023 census estimate, up from 108,755 residents certified in 2010 United States census, 2010. Murfreesboro i ...

. They would go on to win their Ohio Valley Conference title in 2010, making their first playoff appearance the same year.

References

External links

* {{Missouri Sports