The Tigers have managed to keep the big athletic prize longer than anyone else in their conference.
SAN ANTONIO — Walk inside Trinity University’s Bell Athletic Center and you’ll find something completely unrelated: There’s a giant bell in the foyer. But again, it has nothing to do with the building name.
“Coming in as a freshman in the fall of 1999, the standard and tradition was that Trinity would earn this trophy through all sports being successful,” Tigers head football coach Jerheme Urban said. “We’d walk in every single day and ring the bell,” he continued. “I’d walk in, get my ding, and go to work.”
The Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference’s President’s Trophy, known as “The Bell,” hasn’t really made its way around the conference.
“We enjoy the grind every day and we do our best to keep it here,” said football and track athlete Legend Grigsby. “We dominate both male and female (sports).”
The Tigers haven’t won the bell every year, just most years. 2011 was the last year they didn’t, but they did the following year, and that was interesting.
“It took a couple of months to get here,” said athletics office manager Stacey Lenderman. “I was like, it shouldn’t take that long? Where is the bell?”
“They were like, we’re not sure. I said, what do you mean you’re not sure? And then finally somebody said, we think it is in Arizona. What is it doing in Arizona?”
Fortunately for Stacey and the rest of the Trinity family, it did arrive back at its favorite home in San Antonio.
And that, of course, has been the ironic part over the years. Trinity has dominated the conference President’s Trophy competition year in and year out, so we guess it makes sense that the athletic bell has spent the vast majority of its time at the William H Bell Athletic Center.
“When I got here originally, I was under the impression that’s because it was the Bell Center,” Grigsby said.
“It fits perfectly in the Bell Center,” Urban said.
The only bad news is that Trinity is switching conferences at the end of the 2025-26 athletic year, so suddenly, there’s not going to be a bell to win anymore.
“Actually I just hope they forget about it because they have not had it,” Lenderman said. “It’s already been here, so maybe they’ll be like we don’t know what you’re talking about.”
That might be wishful thinking on her part, but it seems fair when you think about it.
The Tigers, by the way, won their 12th straight President’s Trophy this athletic year. The bell is staying put!
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