San Jose State University Athletics Named Best In Readers Poll

    San Jose State University's athletics program was named the winner in the "Best College Sports Teams" category in the Mercury News' 20th annual Best in Silicon Valley 2021 Reader's Choice Awards.
 
Thousands of  Mercury News readers cast votes in more than 100 categories covering entertainment and recreation, beauty and health, food, home, pets, services and shopping in the most-widely read print and online locally-based newspaper.
 
The results were published in the publication's March 28 special section – "The Mercury News Best in SV2021 – 20th annual Best In Silicon
Valley. The Best College Sports Teams category is listed on pages S6 and S7.
 


"Resiliency is not taught; it's part of who you are, and clearly all of our winners and runners-up possess it," according to  Michael Turpin, executive vice president and chief revenue officer of the Bay Area News Group, in the prelude to the paper's special section.

In 2020, the Spartans won the Mountain West football championship and was ranked 24th in the final Associated Press poll, women's basketball's 19 wins in the 2019-20 season were the third most in one season in program history; beach volleyball and softball had winning percentages above.800 when their seasons were halted at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; and men's golfer Bryce Wortman won the 111th Oregon Amateur championship in Portland, Ore.
 
A new state-of-the-art videoboard and scoreboard was unveiled at CEFCU Stadium during the Spartans' championship football season; San Jose State Beach became the first on-campus home for the Spartans' beach volleyball program; women's swimming and diving and the women's water polo had their first competitions in the new on-campus Student Recreation and Aquatics Center; and a successful 2020 fundraising campaign results in a new on-campus baseball facility.

Student-athletes from San Jose State's 22-sport NCAA Division I athletics program earned more than 400 institutional, conference and national academic honors in 2020.
 
Under the umbrella of athlete activism, the voices of San Jose State student-athletes, coaches and staff were heard in peaceful demonstrations and public service messages on #BlackLivesMatter, systemic racism and curbing the spread of COVID-19.
 
Stanford University Athletics was voted runner-up in this year's readers' survey.