Baseball playing baseball for the Mustangs in 2022 The Cal Poly Mustangs baseball program first fielded a team in 1948.
Men's basketball The Cal Poly Mustangs men's basketball team's first season was 1907 and its first season as a four-year institution was in 1941–42. The team had its most successful year in 2014, when the team won the
Big West Tournament, clinching its first
NCAA basketball tournament bid in school history at the Division I level.
Women's basketball The Cal Poly Mustangs women's basketball team's first season was the 1974–75 season.
Women's beach volleyball Cal Poly beach volleyball was founded in July 2013. In February 2016, Cal Poly hired
Todd Rogers, a 2008 Olympic gold medalist in the sport, as its new head coach. Cal Poly has reached 2 Final Fours (2024 & 2025) and has reached the NCAA Tournament in 5 of the last 6 seasons starting with 2019.
Men's and women's cross country In 2019, coach
Mark Conover and his men's squad collected their fourth straight
Big West Conference title and the men's team's 17th crown in a 22-year span. Their last national placing as a team was in 2011, when they finished 28th at the
National Cross Country Championships. In 2018, the women's program, coached by Priscilla Bayley, captured its third Big West Conference crown in a four-year stretch. The men's cross country team has appeared in the NCAA Division I Championships as a full squad seven times, with their highest finish being 10th place in the 2004–05 school year. The Cal Poly women's cross country team hasn't made the NCAA Division I Championships as a full team, but in 2018 advanced both Miranda Daschian and Katie Izzo as individuals to the
NCAA National Cross Country Championships in
Madison, Wisconsin. Peyton Bilo was the program's most recent All-American, taking 23rd place at the
2016 national championships as a sophomore. Conover, the
1988 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials champion, passed in April 2022 following a battle with cancer. On June 20, 2022, Ryan Vanhoy, previously coaching at
Ole Miss, was appointed to lead Cal Poly's program as track and field and cross country director.
Team USA members •
Cal Poly alumnus Phillip Reid represented Team USA at the Great Edinburgh International Run in Scotland in 2012–13 and at the
North America/Central America/Caribbean Championships in Jamaica in 2013.
Football Mustang Football plays in the
Big Sky Conference, competing in the
NCAA Division I FCS. Prior to joining the Big Sky Conference in 2012, the team competed in the Great West Conference and was the first
Great West Football Conference participant in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. Each year Cal Poly plays rival
UC Davis in the annual
Battle for the Golden Horseshoe. The Cal Poly Mustangs have an NCAA Division I FCS Tournament record of 1–4 through four appearances:
1960 Cal Poly football team airline crash Men's golf Pro alumni • Former Mustang
Loren Roberts has earned more than 25 career pro wins at various tournaments. •
Cal Poly's Travis Bertoni, who won three consecutive
Big West Conference Golfer of the Year awards from 2004 to 2006, played at the
U.S. Open in 2008. • Former Mustang Justin De Los Santos played at the
British Open in 2022.
Women's golf Cal Poly won the 2017
Big West Conference championship at Oak Quarry Golf Club in Riverside, California, besting the field with a combined total of 887 strokes. After winning the title, the Mustangs advanced to their first
Division I NCAA Regional tournament, finishing 16th in Albuquerque, New Mexico at UNM South Championship Golf Course. Cal Poly also won back-to-back BWC team championships in 2021 and 2022.
Men's soccer The
Cal Poly Mustangs men's soccer team has had success in recent years. In 2008, coach
Paul Holocher led his team to the
NCAA Division I tournament; they went on to beat
UCLA and ended up losing to
UC Irvine in the second round. Coach
Steve Sampson led the team back to the NCAA tournament in 2015, and three Cal Poly players were selected in the
2016 MLS SuperDraft, tied for the seventh-most nationally. Cal Poly soccer has a strong fan base, averaging 2,017 fans per match in 2019, ranking No. 5 across the country. In 2011, CollegeSoccerNews.com chose Cal Poly vs.
UC Santa Barbara as the No. 1 rivalry in college soccer. Since 2007, the rivalry matches have regularly drawn upwards of 8,000 fans. The men's soccer team have an NCAA Division I Tournament record of 1–3 through three appearances and have never advanced past the second round:
Women's soccer Cal Poly's women's soccer program is coached by Bernardo Silva, who took over following the retirement of Alex Crozier (with a won-loss-draw career record of 325–234–70 overall in 33 seasons, ranking No. 36 in NCAA history for career head coaching victories). The Mustangs have an NCAA Division I Tournament record of 1–6 through six appearances, with the win coming over Fresno State in the first round in 1999, 2–1 in Fresno. Cal Poly fell 3–1 at Stanford in the second round.
Pro alumni •
Gina Oceguera,
WUSA (
35th overall selection of the 2000 draft),
Bay Area CyberRays •
Alyssa Giannetti,
Arna-Bjornar,
Toppserien •
Elise Krieghoff,
Boston Breakers,
NWSL •
Camille Lafaix,
FC Girondins de Bordeaux,
D1 Arkema (France) Softball Pro draft choices •
Sierra Hyland, P: 2017
NPF 4th overall (
Chicago Bandits)/2020 Olympian
Men's and women's track and field All-Americans Combined, all-time in its history, including individual national champions, Cal Poly has produced 527 total All-Americans specific to track & field. 77 of these All-America honors have been awarded in
Division I (with 32 to men and 45 to women, including
AIAW certificates as well as indoor-season accolades), and 450 All-America honors were earned in
Division II (248 to men and 202 to women).
Olympians •
Reynaldo Brown,
1968 (U.S.) •
Mathyas Michael,
1968 (Ethiopia) •
Mohinder Gill,
1972 (India) •
Patrice Donnelly,
1976 (U.S.) •
Karin Smith,
1976/
1980/
1984/
1988 (U.S.) •
Bart Williams,
1980 (U.S.) •
Carmelo Rios,
1984 (Puerto Rico) •
Sue McNeal-Rembao,
1992 (U.S.) •
Sharon Hanson-Lowery,
1996 (U.S.) •
Stephanie Brown Trafton,
2004/
2008/
2012 (U.S.) •
Sharon Day-Monroe,
2008/
2012 (U.S.)
Women's indoor volleyball The women's indoor volleyball team has been one of the school's best sports programs in recent years and in the 1980s when the team reached No. 1 in the nation in 1985 in the
AVCA Coaches Poll. On October 12, 1985, Cal Poly, coached by
Mike Wilton, won the NIVT banner at UCLA before a crowd of about 2,500 fans, 3–1. Soon after, in the October 22 Top 25 Poll, the Mustangs were voted as the No. 1 team in the country. Stanford took back over the top spot in the week after. In 2007, the team captured its second straight Big West title by posting a 15–1 conference record and a 23–8 record overall, and made it to the
third round of the playoffs before losing to Stanford in the Sweet 16. The team also went 23–6 in 2006.
Cal Poly returned to the
AVCA national rankings and
NCAA tournament in both 2017 & 2018 upon winning back-to-back
Big West Conference championships, and then advanced to the
second round of the NCAA tournament in 2019. The team has an NCAA Division I Tournament record of 17–18 through eighteen total appearances.
Wrestling The wrestling program at Cal Poly competes as a member of the
Pac-12 Conference, which is traditionally one of the strongest conferences in
college wrestling. Cal Poly has had two wrestlers (Tom Kline & Mark DiGirolamo) win the Division I
NCAA Wrestling Championship and 50 wrestlers earn All-American honors at the Division I level. In addition to the program's success at the
NCAA Championships, the program has crowned one champion at the
National Collegiate Open Wrestling Championship. On January 30, 2014, Cal Poly hosted
Oregon State in a very rare outdoor wrestling match. The match took place in Cal Poly's University Union Plaza following the weekly UU hour. The only other known outdoor matches have been hosted by
The Citadel Bulldogs, including one during the 2012–13 season.
Arizona State also wrestled Arizona outdoors in the 1970s. The team competes in
Mott Athletics Center on campus, opened back in 1960, seating over 3,000 people for home dual meets and tournaments. Three former Mustang wrestlers after graduation went on to compete in
mixed martial arts, more specifically the
Ultimate Fighting Championships. The first is
Chad Mendes who was a national runner-up at 141 lbs. in 2008, competing for the UFC since 2011 (challenging for a UFC featherweight title in 2012). The most famous wrestling alum is
Chuck Liddell, who graduated in 1995 and is now a retired
UFC Hall of Fame inductee being a former UFC Light heavyweight champion. More recently, 2020 NWCA All-American 197-pounder Tom Lane made his pro fighting debut in the middleweight classification, opening with a win in October 2021. Prior to joining the Division I ranks via the
Pac-12 (then the Pac-10) in 1987, Cal Poly was dominant in the
College Division/Division II, winning the 1966 national championship and seven consecutive NCAA titles from 1968 to 1974. The men's wrestling team has appeared in the
NCAA Division I tournament 51 times, with their highest finish being fifth place in 1969. ==NCAA championships and tournaments==