Bowling Green State University Athletics
15 Moments in 15 Years of the Stroh Center: Falcon History Finds a Permanent Home in Schmidthorst Heritage Hall
August 07, 2026 | General
This summer, join BGSU Athletics in a look back at the first 15 years inside the Stroh Center. The journey through history continues with the opening of Schmidthorst Heritage Hall in Feb. 2020.
Previous Moments in the Series…
- Opening the Doors
- Volleyball Opens the Building With a B!G Win
- Hoops Hit the Hardwood
- The NCAA Tournament Comes to BG
- Stars Step into the Stroh
- Falcons Upset Undefeated and No. 14 Ranked Dayton Flyers
- BGSU Volleyball Shocks the Stroh, Upsetting No. 13 BYU
- Stroh Takes Center Stage for MAC Gymnastics Championships
- BGSU Bests the Bulls Before Record Crowd
- BGSU Hosts MAC Tournament Four Times
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Long before Schmidthorst Heritage Hall had a name, it existed in a cramped corner of Memorial Hall. It was a collection of yellowed newspaper clippings, faded letter jackets and photographs nobody thought to save.
That's where Mickey Cochrane and Don Cunningham started, back in the 70's and 80's. The two stepped back from their full-time roles at Bowling Green State University but weren't ready to let go of the history they'd helped build. They called it a museum, though it was more of a labor of love: two retired coaches and administrators quietly cataloging more than a century of Falcon athletics entirely on their own time.
Thirty-five years later, that labor found its permanent home. On Saturday, Feb. 10, 2020, BGSU's Department of Athletics held the official grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony for Schmidthorst Heritage Hall. The new space, tucked into the east end of the arena at ground level, gives Cochrane and Cunningham's decades of work, now known as the Cochrane Cunningham Athletic Archives, the showcase it deserved.
The archives are considered among the largest and most distinctive of their kind in college athletics, offering alumni and fans an avenue to step into BGSU's sports history while giving prospective students and student-athletes a glimpse of the tradition they'd join.
The road to Saturday's opening started well before construction crews arrived. In 2013, the Lacrosse Alumni group joined forces with BGSU Athletics to formalize what Cochrane and Cunningham had built by hand, turning a volunteer passion project into something permanent. Working alongside University Libraries and the Center for Archival Collections, with a gift from longtime BGSU supporters Al and Carol Schmidthorst, that vision became an experience fans can walk into.
Don Cunningham arrived in Bowling Green from Lima, Ohio, and graduated from the university in 1943. He then spent the next 33 years building the athletics department from the inside, 20 of them as BGSU's first sports information director. Colleagues described an institutional memory that can't be replaced, only preserved. That's precisely what he set out to do, and it's why he's since been inducted into the university's Athletics Hall of Fame.
Mickey Cochrane's story runs just as deep. He joined the Bowling Green community in 1964 as an associate professor in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and as a coach. He helped establish the men's soccer and lacrosse programs at BGSU and spent years on the sidelines for wrestling, baseball, volleyball, swimming and track. Like Cunningham, he's an Athletics Hall of Famer, and BGSU's soccer field carries his name today.
Neither man set out to build a museum. But they couldn't watch history disappear. Now, thanks to decades of quiet persistence and the university's investment in preserving it, that history has a permanent address.
