Rewinding The Tape With Boschini, Part 2: Memories Sweet

TCU Chancellor Emeritus Victor J. Boschini Jr. shares some of his favorite sport-specific memories and stories from a 22-year tenure as chancellor.

Chancellor emeritus Victor J. Boschini Jr. speaks at an event in May celebrating TCU's newest national champion, beach volleyball. / TCU Athletics Facebook Page

The memories and stories from Victor J. Boschini, Jr.'s, 22 years as TCU’s chancellor, and now in his new role as chancellor emeritus, could fill a novel. When looking specifically at athletics, moments like the Rose Bowl victory immediately come to mind, but the Horned Frogs’ athletic success extends beyond the gridiron.  

Getting Boschini’s perspective on the university’s most recent national title felt like a good starting point. 

Chancellor Emeritus Boschini Discusses Recent National Championships and other TCU Sports

Beach Volleyball

In early May, beach volleyball brought home the program’s first national title. Boschini watched the title bout in Gulf Shores, Ala., and still displays some emotion while talking about it. 

"This was nothing 10 years ago, and now we're beating UCLA, USC, all these schools that win it all the time," he said. "We're the national champions."

TCU added beach volleyball in 2015. At the time, Boschini was told building a national title contender could take 10-20 years. The Horned Frogs flew through that timeline under head coach Hector Gutierrez, whom Boschini calls a “star,” reaching the Elite Eight in 2022 and semifinals in 2023 before bringing home the ultimate prize.   

Men’s Tennis

Men’s tennis nearly brought home a second straight national championship this spring. The Horned Frogs beat Texas in 2024 for the national title and lost to Wake Forest this year. TCU has two ITA Indoor National Championships (2022 and 2023) in the trophy case as well. 

Watching lower-profile sports like tennis and beach volleyball win national titles has been a rewarding, but also vindicating experience, Boschini said. 

"When we started pumping resources into a lot of these quote 'other’ sports, people were really critical of it,” he said. "Why would you take a dollar away from football or basketball? I like to say that it's not like a pie where if you take part of it out, it denies it from the other person. It helps everybody when any one sport rises to excellence.”

And having former TCU tennis player David Roditi lead the charge makes it extra special. 

“Here's a guy who was one of those kids 20 years ago,” Boschini said. “And now he's the coach of the national championship team.”  

Rifle

Karen Monez arrived at TCU the same year as Boschini and leads the university’s most decorated program in terms of national championships. Rifle has won four team titles with Monez at the helm (2010, 2012, 2019, and 2024) and must outshoot co-ed teams like Army in the process, which always makes Boschini smile. 

“I'm like, OK, they're trained to shoot people, that's their job,” he says. “And we beat them, and we have all women. I love it.”

Rifle also has five national titles in the air rifle discipline (2010, 2012, 2021, 2022, and 2024) and two in smallbore (2013 and 2019). The program’s consistency and the way Monez approaches her job impresses Boschini. 

“She's just solid gold, in my opinion,” he said. “And I also think people underestimate the difficulty of leading the championship team year, after year, after year.”

Baseball

The baseball program was in the midst of a 19-year conference title drought when Jim Schlossnagle arrived in 2003. By the end of Schlossnagle’s 18-year tenure, the Horned Frogs had claimed 12 regular season titles and made five College World Series appearances. 

Kirk Sarloss kept the ball rolling following Schlossnagle’s 2021 departure for Texas A&M. The Horned Frogs won a conference title in 2022 and made the CWS in 2023. 

“It's hard to keep that momentum up,” Boschini said. “And the nice thing about Sarloos is he had worked closely with the former coach, and the players knew him. He's another one, very much a player's coach.”

Boschini and Schlossnagle developed a relationship away from the diamond while navigating a new environment and raising children around the same age. When coaches leave, Boschini admits he gets “heartbroken” because of the friendships formed. He understands college athletics is a business, though, and feels “privileged” to experience the big wins and tough losses alongside coaches and student-athletes. 

When the opportunity arises, Boschini enjoys catching up with former athletics colleagues, noting a recent business trip to Austin included lunch with Schlossnagle and former director of intercollegiate athletics Chris Del Conte, now both at Texas. 

Football

When asked about his most memorable football moment, Boschini immediately picked the 2011 Rose Bowl win. Just receiving an invite to a game considered “The Granddaddy of Them All” could alter the trajectory of a midmajor program like TCU. Former head coach Gary Patterson’s team took that momentum to another level by beating Wisconsin 21-19. 

Boschini enjoyed everything about the Rose Bowl experience, from the float-building day to the parade to the dinners. He remembers the emotions shared by both teams after the game, catching former Wisconsin defensive end and future NFL Hall of Famer J.J. Watt crying on the sideline. 

Inside TCU’s locker room, he found a similar emotion but for a different reason. The Horned Frogs proved on a national stage that they could beat “power” programs.  

“Just the look on our guys' faces in the locker room, it'd be a moment I'll never forget,” Boschini said. 

Men’s Basketball

Before TCU alum Jamie Dixon took over men’s basketball in 2016-17, the program’s list of notable accomplishments was pretty short: an Elite Eight appearance in the 1968 NCAA tournament (with 23 teams participating) and 11 conference titles. Dixon helped the Horned Frogs win titles Nos. 9 and 10 in 1986 and 1987 as a player. The most recent conference title came in 1998. 

Dixon’s inaugural season as coach ended just shy of TCU’s first NCAA tournament bid since 1998, but the team used it as motivation and won the NIT championship. The final two games took place at historic Madison Square Garden in New York City. When the team visited Times Square, they saw familiar faces staring back at them. 

“They put up all the pictures of all our players, huge, like, 60 feet high,” Boschini said. “And it just was, again, one of those surreal athletic experiences that you couldn't get through any other way.”

Boschini points to that season as a turning point for basketball. It set the table for four NCAA appearances in the next eight years (2018, 2022-24), two top-five finishes in the Big 12 standings (2021-22, 2022-23), and an NIT semifinal run in 2019. 

Women’s Basketball

Boschini watched TCU women’s basketball make the NCAA tournament seven times as a Mountain West Conference member, but this year’s historic Elite Eight run stood out above those trips. 

“The most fun ever, I'm not kidding,” Boschini said of the 2025 season. “Because every game was like a magical thing, the next time you thought, ‘Oh, this won't happen’ and it happened again.”

The Horned Frogs won the Big 12 regular season and tournament titles - both program firsts - and made the NCAA tournament for the first time in 15 years. Head coach Mark Campbell had turned a 1-17 Big 12 program into champions in just his second year. 

Boschini and his wife regularly attended home games and knew the fans sitting near them by name. As the team stacked up wins, more people started attending games. By the time the Horned Frogs hosted Louisville in the second round of the tournament, the crowd had grown to a record 7,494 people. Boschini loved every moment. 

“All of a sudden, there were people there you didn't know,” he said. “And then more people you didn't know and more people you didn't know. And that's what made it fun.”

Looking Ahead

Over the past 22 years, every TCU team has shined on the national stage. 

Equestrian has qualified for the NCEA National Championships the last 16 seasons with six semifinal appearances and two runner-up finishes. Soccer has eight NCAA tournament appearances since 2016, reaching the Elite Eight in 2020, and three Big 12 titles (2020, 2021, 2024) while Volleyball made its third straight NCAA tournament appearance last fall. 

Both golf programs are perennial NCAA tournament teams, the swim & dive and track & field programs consistently produce All-Americans, and women’s tennis claimed the inaugural NIT title in 2023. Triathlon, the newest addition in 2023, produced a fourth-place finish at nationals in fall 2024.

Maintaining this strong national presence might be challenging amidst the current college athletics landscape. The recent approval of the House v. NCAA settlement, combined with the transfer portal and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), means money will play a bigger role than ever before in an athletic department's success. 

As chancellor emeritus, Boschini will continue fundraising for TCU and knows not everyone likes NIL.   

“You may think it's ridiculous,” he said. “But here's my question to you: ‘Would you rather win next year or lose?’ OK, I know that answer and so we're going to love NIL.”

Boschini has adjusted his approach and mindset over the past 22 years to keep pace with changes in higher education, but his friendly, welcoming demeanor remains the same.

And, of course, he will always bleed purple. 

“My dream was TCU,” he said. 

Click here to read last week's Part One interview with Chancellor Emeritus Boschini.

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