A decade ago, CIU didn’t have sports. Now it’s USC’s first basketball foe of season
Propped on a window sill in James Whitaker’s office is a framed publication cover that begins one chapter of how South Carolina men’s basketball came to scheduling its lone exhibition opponent of the 2019-20 season.
“HISTORY STARTS HERE” is spelled out in bold, white letters across a night sky. Lights shine on an empty soccer field. The date Aug. 25, 2012, is printed in yellow at the bottom.
“His first program, his first team and his first win,” Kim Abbott said with a wink toward Whitaker, who flashed a grin from across a table.
Columbia International University blanked Toccoa Falls College, 1-0, in men’s soccer that evening, officially taking a 90-year-old school into the world of college athletics. Kim Abbott was the athletics director then. Whitaker was in charge of men’s soccer as one of two active coaches on campus.
On Wednesday, both of them — with Whitaker as AD and Abbott as senior women’s administrator — will be in Colonial Life Arena to watch their Rams take on Frank Martin’s Gamecocks. CIU has developed from three varsity teams to 14, from 40 student-athletes to 250, from Columbia’s little known Bible school to getting a chance on one of the city’s biggest stages.
“Year 1, that wasn’t going to happen,” Whitaker said. “The University of South Carolina wasn’t interested in playing CIU because we didn’t have the history, we didn’t have a competitive team we could put up against them. So to see the growth of our program from a competitive standpoint that South Carolina would take us as a game, that shows the competitive growth of our program.”
How it started, why it started
Turning from Monticello Road to International Boulevard on the north side of town puts you in a kind of trivia game. Whose flag is that? Which country has those colors?
CIU reports over 19,000 alumni in 150 nations, many of which are represented at the top of several poles seen as you travel deeper through campus. Past Ben Lippen High School, the dormitories, the Shortess Chapel and Prayer Towers is Sessions Field, a pitch with a symbolic name that connects the school’s origins with the birth of its athletics department.
In 1923, a small group of spiritual women had their urges granted when Columbia Bible School was founded as the first of its kind in the South. The school’s location — originally downtown — and name have changed, but the tradition of the “Praying Ladies” hasn’t.
“They’ll contact us every month,” Abbott said, “and say, ‘What are your prayer requests?’ And sometimes they’ll even call us into one of their prayer meetings, so we can share more intimately, whether it’s something personal or whether it’s something with our department.”
The late Elizabeth Sessions, a 1943 CIU graduate, was a second generation Praying Lady. It was her generous donation that funded construction of the soccer field.
“She knew through her grandchildren that athletics was so important to have on a college campus,” Abbott said. “So in some ways you’d think it would be some former athlete or some man, but it was a 94-year-old woman who gave that because she saw that as important.”
After starting athletics at USC Beaufort, Abbott came to CIU and was tasked with doing the same.
The goal of this launch was far-reaching. CIU saw sports as a way to further carry out its decades-long mission of spreading Christian faith.
“Missionaries have long been a part of CIU’s history,” Abbott said, “but athletics and competing internationally got us to do more with that. What we do now is we send a sports team about once every three years or so on a mission trip. You send a soccer team and they get into nations to play soccer or teach soccer. A missionary may not be able to do that. That’s why we needed sports.”
A sampling of mission trips so far: volleyball team to Spain; men’s soccer to Colombia; softball team to Israel; women’s basketball to Dominican Republic; and men’s basketball to Honduras.
On a local level, the basketball programs host “Hoop for Hope,” a camp for Columbia youth with stations ranging from dribbling drills to Bible devotionals.
“Kids come here to play basketball,” said men’s coach Tony Stockman, “and hopefully get a degree and build a relationship with Christ.”
CIU athletics lists on its website core values of spiritual growth, servant leadership, academic achievement and competitive excellence.
“It can be an ‘and,’” Abbott said. “It doesn’t have to be an ‘or.’ You’re going to be Christian or you’re going to be good. Which one are you going to be? We don’t want that. We want the ‘and.’ So we hire coaches that see that.”
Visibility leads to opportunity
Since sports were established in 2012 — the teams compete in the lower-level NAIA — CIU’s undergraduate enrollment has gone from 479 to 771. The school says both sports and the additional of more academic programs should factor into the 61 percent increase.
“CIU had been here for 90 years, but unless you’re in the Christian community, so few people knew about CIU,” said Whitaker, who came to CIU after winning two championships at Clearwater Christian in Florida. “We’re not exactly on the way to something — it’s not like you drive by our campus. So because we didn’t have athletics, a lot of people even here in Columbia didn’t know about CIU.”
CIU was on Frank Martin’s radar this summer as it hosted an open gym for his son and others playing for the Richland County Rebels AAU program. It’s here where he met Stockman, CIU’s second-year coach and former Clemson guard.
For the first time in six years, an in-state Division II team isn’t on USC’s regular season schedule. There was room, however, for a similar foe in the preseason.
Stockman already had four NCAA Division I teams on CIU’s 2019-20 schedule — Charleston Southern, Mercer, Furman, Middle Tennessee — but he couldn’t turn down the local one from the SEC.
“Just talking to (Martin), he’s always trying to play the lower schools to help them out and give them an opportunity to do it,” Stockman said. “So just knowing his heart for that, it’s great. And for us to get a chance to be a part of that is awesome.”
The Rams are coming off their first winning season in their six-year history. Stockman divvies up seven scholarships among his 19-man roster, including nine freshmen and eight transfers.
For the majority of them — if not all — Wednesday’s game feels like the biggest of their careers.
“Everybody talks about it,” said senior guard John Johnson. “They’re like, ‘What’s it going to be like?’ It’s just right down the road, so a lot of people are going to be there. Everybody’s excited, everybody’s got it marked on their calendar. Everybody’s ready.”
From Stockman to Whitaker to Abbott to the Praying Ladies.
USC and CIU, a cross-town matchup over 90 years in the making.
“We’re all competitors,” Abbott said. “We’re up for it. We’re up for it, for sure.”
Game info
Who: Columbia International at South Carolina
What: Men’s basketball exhibition game
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Colonial Life Arena
Admission: Free
