To mark Old Dominion's 25th anniversary as an NCAA Division I school, athletic director Jim Jarrett was given the unenviable task of picking a Top 10 sports highlights starting from the 1976-77 season.

What made the assignment easy also made it difficult. While Jarrett has been at the university for 25 years and more to witness all of the many Monarch successes, it was hard to pick just 10. (In recognition of the difficulty of the task, we'll have to forgive him for not ranking his Top 10.)

Here, in chronological order, is his list:

1979 - A sellout crowd at Scope and a national audience via ESPN watch the Lady Monarchs play the Russian National Team.

1979 - The Lady Monarchs win the first of two straight AIAW national basketball titles.

1981 - The men's basketball team defeats number-one ranked DePaul in Chicago on a final-seconds shot by Billy Mann.

1982 - Yogi Hightower becomes the first of five Lady Monarch field hockey players to earn the prestigious Honda Award as the best in her sport. (The others are Christy Morgan, 1984; Kelli James, 1992; Mimi Smith, 1998; and Marina DiGiacomo, 2000.)

1982 and 1991 - The field hockey team wins the first of three straight NCAA titles.

1985 - The Lady Monarch basketball team defeats Georgia for its first NCAA national championship.

1989 and 1990 - The sailing program is awarded the Fowle Trophy as the nation's top sailing program.

1995 - Field hockey All-American Samantha Salvia becomes the university's first Rhodes Scholar.

1995 - The men's basketball team wins in triple overtime over Villanova in the NCAA first round.

1997 - The Lady Monarch basketball team defeats Stanford in overtime to advance to the NCAA final.