Concordia athletic department to honor Hall of Fame inductees, Senior Athletes of the Year

The Concordia football team at the Sept. 7 home game.

Photo credit: Josiah Seabaugh

By Kai Olbrich

This story is featured in the September print edition of the Sower newspaper. 

Concordia will induct its 2024 Athletic Hall of Fame class – six individuals and one team– on Sept. 27 as part of 2024 Homecoming Week festivities.

Three standout Bulldogs athletes, Joey Grabanski for baseball, Camryn Fehlhafer for volleyball and Josie Puelz for track and field, also will be honored for receiving Senior Athlete of the Year awards.

Grabanski broke the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics’ career home run record of 77 by hitting 88 homers. He also set the NAIA record for RBIs in a career, finishing his time at Concordia with an even 300. He said throughout his career as a Bulldog, he took it one day at a time.

“It’s always hard to stay consistent through anything, but buying into our team culture helped me take things one day at a time and not forget that there’s always room for getting better even if it was one percent better every day,” Grabanski said.

Along the way Grabanski also was named Great Plains Athletic Conference Player of the Season in 2023, co-player of the season with teammate Jaidan Quinn in 2024, and first-team All-GPAC in all four years. He also won two NAIA All-American awards.

Grabanski also holds Concordia records with a career batting average at .382, RBIs in a season at 88 and bases on balls at 129. His 88 home runs and 300 RBIs also are Concordia records.

After graduating in 2024, Grabanski signed a professional contract with the Windy City Thunderbolts in Chicago, a minor league team affiliated with Major League Baseball.

The 2024 Senior Athlete Award was split between Fehlhafer and Puelz on the women’s side.

Fehlhafer, a Seward native, was an outside hitter for the volleyball team. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she returned for a fifth year as her sophomore season was cut short.

Fehlhafer was the 2019 GPAC and American Volleyball Coaches Association West Central Region Freshman of the Year and an All-GPAC player all four years. She made multiple NAIA national championship all-tournament teams.

Fehlhafer led the Bulldogs to their first No. 1 national coaches poll ranking and their highest single-season win percentage of .862 in 2023. She had 293 kills in her senior season, which brought her up to 1,561 for her career, third in the Concordia record book. Fehlhafer also had the third-most career digs, with 1671.

Fehlhafer’s teams had an overall record of 112-35 throughout her five seasons, including three GPAC tournament runner-up finishes and five national tournament appearances.

Puelz, best known for her pole-vaulting prowess, graduated from Lincoln Lutheran High School and is the fourth track and field athlete in a row to win the award on the women’s side.

Puelz won five national championships in pole vault and holds the NAIA record for outdoor pole vault at 4.15 meters, which she set in 2021 at the GPAC Championships. Her vault of 4.10 meters at the 2022 Indoor National Championship meet put her just 0.1 meters shy of the championship meet record.

Puelz was included in the Lincoln Journal Star State College Female Athlete of the Year, CoSIDA Academic All-American of the Year and has numerous GPAC Championship titles. She was a big part of her team’s success during her time at Concordia and was part of nine GPAC Championship teams and six top four national finishes.

Hall of Fame inductees

Audra (Nothwehr) Anderson was a two-sport athlete in both women’s tennis and volleyball. In 2000 Anderson earned the last ever NIAC Women’s Tennis Player of the Year award. She earned four first-team all-conference awards and also played four seasons on the Bulldog volleyball team.

Elizabeth (Rhoden) Dillingham starred for the Concordia women’s basketball team as a guard from the 2000-2001 season to the 2003-2004 season, earning three GPAC All-Conference awards. She was named to the NAIA National Championship All-Tournament team and has the fifth-best assist record in team history with 492.

Kregg Einspahr was a student-athlete, track and field head coach, and biology teacher. He earned six national titles and a spot in the original 1994 Concordia Hall of Fame class. He also featured in three separate Olympic trials. His coaching career spanned 24 years and included 19 GPAC Coach of the Year awards. Einspahr was honored as the NAIA Coach of the Year three times and his teams earned an NAIA outdoor national title in 2015 and 2016, his last two seasons.

Ceron Francisco of the class of 2017 went 14-8 in his freshman year as a wrestler and qualified for the NAIA National Tournament in each of his next three seasons. He had a 30-15 record as a junior and went 26-2 as a senior. He went on to pursue an international career in wrestling and eventually retired at the age of 25 after the trials leading up to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. He now is a coach at North Dakota State University.

Frank Greene became the winningest softball coach in Concordia history during his two stints at the helm. His teams won three GPAC titles and Greene was named GPAC and NAIA Region IV Coach of the Year in 2005, the year the team broke the school record for wins in a season with 36. Greene also was a teacher, public address announcer, and broadcaster.

Katie (Werner) Loveless is a 2008 graduate and a standout in volleyball and track and field. She was voted as the 2008 female Senior Athlete of the Year. She led the volleyball team in blocks as a freshman and was named to the All-GPAC second team. As a senior, Loveless was named to the Omaha World-Herald All-Nebraska team and holds the Bulldog record for all-time for career blocks with 787. In track and field Loveless was a shot-put specialist, holding the Concordia record when she graduated at 46-feet 2 inches. Loveless earned three NAIA All-American awards.

The 2004-05 men’s basketball team, coached by Grant Schmidt, is the only team on this year’s list. The Bulldogs went 32-6 overall and 14-4 in the GPAC, winning the 54th annual Concordia Invitational Tournament and the GPAC tournament.