MOBILE, Ala. — The University of South Alabama has announced the four former Jaguars who will make up the Class of 2026 for the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame, a group that spans three decades of competition and four different sports.
The inductees are Emilie Berge (women’s track and field, 2017-21), Alexandria Stiteler (women’s tennis, 2015-19), Mike Nakamura (baseball, 1995-97) and Briana Morris (soccer, 2016-19). They will be formally enshrined at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14, in the Athletic Department Hall of Fame alcove inside the Mitchell Center, across from the Waterman Globe.
The ceremony is free and open to the public. Later that same afternoon, the four will be recognized again in front of a considerably larger audience when the Jaguars host Troy at Hancock Whitney Stadium.
A Class Built on Conference Dominance
What links this particular group is not simply that each was good. It is that each was, for a stretch, the best in the Sun Belt Conference at what they did — and in two cases, the first Jaguar ever to hold a particular distinction.
Three of the four won conference player-of-the-year honors or multiple league championships. The fourth pitched in the Olympic Games and later in Major League Baseball. Taken together, the class covers South Alabama’s competitive range: an individual-scoring track athlete, a singles-and-doubles tennis standout, a closer on nationally ranked baseball teams and a forward who anchored three championship soccer seasons.
Emilie Berge — Women’s Track and Field, 2017-21
Berge’s specialty events were the multis, which are the most demanding assignments in track and field. The heptathlon requires seven events across two days — 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200 meters on day one, then long jump, javelin and the 800 meters on day two. The indoor pentathlon compresses five events into a single day. Success in either requires an athlete to be genuinely accomplished at sprinting, jumping and throwing at the same time, and there is no place to hide a weakness.
Berge won three Sun Belt Conference championships in the heptathlon and two in the pentathlon. She was an All-Sun Belt performer, and she holds both conference and South Alabama school records in the heptathlon and the pentathlon — a rare double that means no Jaguar, and no one else in the league at the time, scored higher.
Her most significant national result came in 2019, when she earned second-team All-America honors at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships. That same season she was named the Sun Belt’s indoor women’s Most Outstanding Field Performer, an award that recognizes the top performer across all field events in the conference rather than in a single discipline.
Alexandria Stiteler — Women’s Tennis, 2015-19
Stiteler arrived at South Alabama and made an immediate impact, winning Sun Belt Freshman of the Year in 2016. She went on to become the first Sun Belt Player of the Year in the program’s history — a distinction that belongs to her alone in the South Alabama record book.
Her consistency was remarkable. She earned first-team all-conference singles honors in all four of her seasons: 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. In doubles, she was a first-team all-conference selection in 2016 and a second-team selection in 2017. Over her career she was named Sun Belt Player of the Week 11 times.
The career numbers hold up just as well. Stiteler ranks third in program history with 83 career wins and fifth with 66 dual-match wins. Most notably, she holds the program record for career dual wins from the No. 1 singles position with 65 — a statistic that carries particular weight in college tennis, because the No. 1 line draws every opponent’s best player, week after week, with no favorable matchups.
During her four years on the roster, South Alabama compiled an 84-20 team record.
Mike Nakamura — Baseball, 1995-97
Nakamura’s South Alabama career lasted three seasons and produced the most unusual résumé in the class. He was a first-team Collegiate Baseball Freshman All-America selection and a second-team all-league pick in 1995. The following year, Collegiate Baseball named him a second-team All-American and he was a first-team All-Sun Belt selection.
He finished his Jaguar career with a 19-8 record and a 4.11 earned run average. His 17 career saves rank third in program history, and his 221 strikeouts rank 10th.
The freshman season was the outlier. Nakamura posted a 2.45 ERA and recorded 12 saves — a season record at the time — leading the Sun Belt in saves and ranking among the top 10 nationally in the category. South Alabama went 41-17 that year and advanced to an NCAA Regional. As a sophomore he went 6-3 with three saves and a 4.48 ERA while helping the Jaguars win both the Sun Belt regular-season title and the conference tournament, earning another NCAA Regional appearance.
His career after Mobile took an uncommon path. Nakamura competed in the 1996 Olympic Games as a member of the Australian national team, then signed a free-agent contract with the Minnesota Twins in 1997. He reached the Major Leagues and pitched two seasons there, appearing with Minnesota in 2003 and Toronto in 2004.
Briana Morris — Soccer, 2016-19
Morris closed out her Jaguar career with a senior season that swept the league’s top individual honors. In 2019 she was named both Sun Belt Player of the Year and Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year, and she was a first-team All-Sun Belt selection. She had earlier been named to the Sun Belt All-Tournament team in 2018.
She scored 16 goals as a senior, a total tied for third on the South Alabama single-season list. Her 34 points that year rank ninth in program history for a single season, and her rate of .73 goals per game in 2019 stands fifth all-time at South Alabama.
Team success followed her throughout. Morris helped lead the Jaguars to three Sun Belt regular-season titles and three conference tournament titles, in 2016, 2017 and 2019, and she was a member of three NCAA Tournament teams in those same years.
The Ceremony and the Setting
The Hall of Fame alcove in the Mitchell Center places the enshrinement inside the building that hosts South Alabama basketball and volleyball, rather than in a separate off-campus venue. That choice keeps the honorees’ names in a space that current student-athletes and visiting fans pass through routinely.
Scheduling the 10 a.m. ceremony on a home football Saturday is a practical decision as well as a symbolic one. It draws returning alumni who are already traveling to Mobile for the game, and it gives the inductees a second moment of recognition in front of a full stadium. The Troy matchup is among the most established rivalries on South Alabama’s schedule, which typically makes it one of the better-attended dates of the season.
What Induction Represents for a Younger Athletic Program
South Alabama’s athletic history is shorter than that of many of its regional peers, which gives each Hall of Fame class a slightly different function than it would serve at an older institution. Records set in the 1990s and 2010s are, in many cases, still the program records. Stiteler’s No. 1 singles mark, Berge’s multi-event scores and Nakamura’s save totals are not distant historical footnotes; they remain the standards current Jaguars are measured against.
That also means the Class of 2026 arrives with its achievements largely intact and unchallenged. Berge still holds the conference and school records in both of her events. Stiteler is still the only Sun Belt Player of the Year in the program’s tennis history. Morris’s 2019 season still sits near the top of three separate program lists.
Fans planning to attend should note that the induction requires no ticket and no registration. The ceremony begins at 10 a.m. on Nov. 14 at the Mitchell Center, and the inductees will be honored again during the football game against Troy at Hancock Whitney Stadium the same day.