March 7, 2014
IN THIS
ISSUE 04 Cycling - Spring Victories For more information on any of the club teams, visit the website:
06 Baseball - A Tough Start to the Season
clubsports.appstate.edu
08 Snowboarding - Why Snowboard?
email us at
10 - 14 Team Updates
clubsports@appstate.edu Student Recreation Center (828)262-2100
Fencing 10 12 Triathlon
Director of UREC: Joe Carter carterjr@appstate.edu
13 Women’s Basketball 14 Equestrian
or call us at the
Director of Club Sports: Erin Sanders sandersec1@appstate.edu
15 Executive’s Corner
Club Sports Specialist: Hannah Roberts robertshj@appstate.edu Publicity Programmer: Miles Elliott elliottmd@appstate.edu Executive Officers: Jessie Harrelson harrelsonje@appstate.edu Ashley Cutrell cutrellae@appstate.edu Tyler Grandis grandistw@appstate.edu
THE March 7th Edition of the Club Sports Illustrated Designed by Miles Elliott with assets from Marcie Ried Cover Photo provided by Cycling Team
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CLUB SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /// March 7th, 2014
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by Zeb Ramsbotham, Member
Photo provided by Cycling Team
Since the last article our conference’s road season has kicked off! The team has traveled to William & Mary, UNC Wilmington, and UNC Chapel Hill. So far we are off to a great start with multiple wins and top ten finishes. This
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past weekend we traveled to Wilmington to compete in the road race hosted by their cycling team. It was a great day for ASU with wins in three categories. Eric Burton won in Men’s C (his first collegiate race!), Cinthia Lehner in Women’s A, and Zeb King in Men’s A. The race was on a flat course and in each
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category it came down to a final field sprint. Zeb’s was by far the most explosive finish and got everyone on the team excited for more racing! On Sunday we went over to UNC to race around their Friday Center in the first criterium of the year. It’s a bit like NASCAR on bikes as you race in a short loop for a designated amount of laps. Gene Taylor
Photo provided by Cycling Team
went on to win Men’s B, Cinthia Lehner won again in the A’s with teammate Nina Laughlin second. Zeb King and some other riders lapped their field and he finished second in the sprint. We have to say a huge thanks to UNC Wilmington for hosting our riders in Wilmington and the families of Alex McMahon and Craig Stewart for hosting in the Raleigh area. Due to a race cancellation the next one on our schedule is our home race hosted in Wilkesboro! We plan to train hard over the
“So far we are off to a great start with multiple wins and top ten finishes.”
coming weeks to prepare for another dominant weekend of App State racing! To help the race run smoothly we may need some volunteers. If you need hours feel free to email AppStateCycling@gmail.com and we may have an opportunity for you! Races are also incredibly fun to watch and have an exciting atmosphere so consider coming down the mountain to see what we do. Be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook/Twitter page for more updates.
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Photo provided by Baseball Team
A Tough Start To the Season The spring season has started for the Club Baseball team at last. After three months of rest during the winter time, the team had their first series against #10 East Carolina University this past weekend in Greenville, N.C. App State was supposed to have already played Virginia Tech, but the series was canceled to the winter weather two week ago. The series against ECU did not go as the team planned. The first game on Saturday night (turning
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by Patrick Sekel, Secretary
out to be the 9-inning game due to schedule issues) turned out to be a foreshadowing of the weekend. Veteran pitcher Josh Kelly pitched 5.1 innings, allowing 7 hits, 7 earned runs, 6 walks, and 7 strikeouts. The game ended in the 7th inning after ECU scored making it 10-0, applying the mercy rule to end the game. Appalachian State hoped that the double-header games on Sunday would be different. This first game showed no different from the night before.
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“It was a difficult weekend,” said Duncan after it all. “Not having the Virginia Tech series really hurt us more than we thought...”
Tyler Piercy pitched 2.2 innings, allowing 4 hits, 4 earned runs, 8 walks, and 2 strikeouts. During the top of the 5th inning, catcher Matt Hodges singled to RF to put men on second and first with 2 outs with ECU up 7-0. President Ben Duncan put Jon Hall in the game to run for Matt, after asking the umpires if this was OK to make sure they weren’t breaking any rules. The umpires allowed it. The inning ended during the next at-bat and the mountaineers took the field. As Hodges went behind the plate to catch, the ECU fans and players began complaining to the umpires that App State had put in a pinch runner for him and he was out of the game. The umpires discussed and agreed that this was the case and ordered Matt to go back to the bench. President Ben Duncan stated his case to the umpires,
but they would have no word of it. With backup Grant Caudill not present due to personal reasons, Duncan went behind the plate himself to catch the rest of the game. It ended in the next inning with a score of 10-0. The team now looked to try to avoid the sweep. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Ben Duncan pitched 4.0 innings and allowed 7 hits, 8 earned runs, 4 walks, and 1 strikeout. ECU would win again 10-0 in 5 innings. “It was a difficult weekend,” said Duncan after it all. “Not having the Virginia Tech series really hurt us more than we thought. Granted, ECU is a very good team, we just weren’t as prepared and ready as they were. They did get a lot of home cooking calls, but that can’t be an excuse for us. Out
fielding was great, only a couple of errors, but nothing big. But I know for a fact we can pitch and hit a lot better.” In spite of the tough weekend, shortstop Jamey Meeker had a good performance going 2-7 at the plate with two singles, while making amazing plays in the field. The App State Club Baseball team travels down to the Tampa Bay area in Florida during Spring Break to play four games against Central Michigan, Bowling Green, Virginia Tech, and Illinois State. The Mountaineers will then host Wake Forest here in Boone on March 22-23 for its first home conferences series in a while. “We just got to get back on track,” said officer Mike Aiello. “There’s only one way to go now; up.”
Photo provided by Baseball Team
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Photo provided by Snowboard Team
Why Snowboard? by Katrina Matza, Secretary
People usually stumble upon Snowboarding through friends or by word of mouth, decide that snowboarding does look like a lot of fun, and resolve to give it a try. More often than not, after their first encounter with snowboarding, they get hooked with it. In fact, you’ll doubtlessly have a hard time finding someone who tried Snowboarding and was afterwards disappointed with the experience. Let’s be real, it’s a great sport.
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One of the reasons why snowboarding has become such a popular sport is because it gives you freedom to choose between high speed adrenaline rushes, complex snowboarding tricks, or taking a simple relaxing descent. Not only that, snowboarding has so much to offer: • Different snowboard riding styles to choose from tot develop yourself. • Breathtaking terrains as you travel across the country looking for the greatest and most exciting runs.
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• Amazing adrenaline rushes from performing snowboard aerial tricks and high-speed descents. • A great variety of very steezy snowboard gear that will further improve your snowboarding skills and make you look like a snow god. • A steep learning curve with most snowboarding novices being able to hit their first slope after 2-3 days. • Enough challenges, techniques, and styles to keep you hooked for years. • Different kinds of snowboarding terrains to
Photo provided by Snowboard Team
master ranging from well groomed ski slopes to backcountry wilderness. • Different kinds of snow conditions to master, ranging from fresh powder to ice. • Now an Olympic winter sport! • Hundreds of thousands of fellow snowboarding enthusiasts that all share your passion wherever you go, thus friends can always be made on the slopes. Imagine this. You are surfing through knee-deep powder on a steep mountain slope in an almost weightless state. As if you’re flying, you feel the swooshing of air on your skin as you pick up speed. The sun warms your face as you carve one high-speed turn after another.
The mountain is yours. You have complete freedom to cruise your snowboard wherever you want it to take you. As you slalom through the trees, you notice an excellent take off platform and decide to go for it: you bend your knees a little more as your speed increases, you lift off, make a perfect 360 turn before landing safely on both feet. Adrenaline rushes through your body as you gradually decrease your speed and take it easy to enjoy the exceptional views. This is what most snowboarders experience on the daily including the Appalachian State Snowboard Team. The team gets to live these experiences every weekend during the season, in other words our weekends are better than yours. There
is nothing better than being in the great environment of the mountains, soaking up the culture of snow life and being with people you can never have a dull moment with; this is the life of the Appalachian Snowboard Team.
“The mountain is yours. You have complete freedom to cruise your snowboard wherever you want it to take you.”
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Photo Provided by Fencing Team
Team Update
Fencing By Alex Fogleman, Member
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CLUB SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /// March 7th, 2014
Photo by Miles Elliott
This past weekend the Appalachian State University Fencing Club traveled to Raleigh to compete in the annual North Carolina Divisional Tournament. This year, the tournament, which has been held at Universities for the past several years, was held at NBS Gym. This was of particular excitement for one of our members, Alex Fogleman, who had an opportunity to return to the gym where he learned to fence when he was in high school. This years Divisionals included competing fencers from ECU, UNC, NC State, UNC-G, UNC-W, a multitude of assorted fencing clubs from around the state, and, of course, our very own Appalachian State University Fencing Club. In total, more than 60 fencers were there to compete in two days worth of fencing events.
In the foil event, Alex Fogleman, Sean Cobb, and Bennett Hatfield represented Appalachian State. They each fenced five bouts. The fencing was intense. Alex enjoyed the chance to fence many of those that he learned with. However, his sixth bout against a fencer from Cape Fear prevented him from meeting his past clubmates higher up in the bracket. Sean Cobb only started fencing last semester and this was the first tournament that he attended. Sean did fantastically, making it through five bouts before losing gracefully to a fencer from NC State. Bennett Hatfield similarly fenced through five bouts as well. His final victory was against a fencer that he had previously lost to at the tournament Appstate hosted last spring. In his sixth bout, Bennett lost to a fencer from NC State, the same NC State fencer that Vlad Vedock would later face in his final bout during the epee portion of the tournament. All in all, the Appstate foilists did very well.
In the epee event, Appstate’s Vlad Vedock won six bouts. In his final bout, Vlad Vedock lost to a fencer from NC State who went on to take second. Unfortunately, an earlier bout had pitted Vlad Vedock against Evan Zuercher, Appstate’s other competing epeeist. Though the individual nature of the tournament caused two of our club to compete against one another, it was an excellent bout. Ultimately, Vlad defeated Evan, and Vlad successfully made it into the top 16 of all North Carolina Epeeists. The Appstate Fencing Club had a great time last weekend. They may not have gotten to take home any medals, but there was a lot of excellent fencing and such a large tournament was an exciting time to see where they place out of all the fencers in the state of North Carolina.
“...there was a lot of excellent fencing...”
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Photo Provided by Triathlon Team
Team Update
Triathlon by Allison Crook, Secretary
Triathlon Team is meeting with our new coach, Bob Willix, this coming week, and we are looking forward to new perspectives and training advice as the semester continues. We have loved the nicer weather and getting out on longer rides and runs. Spring Break will be a good rest and recovery time, as we are going full speed after
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the break. On April 6th, we will be competing at the White Lake Sprint Triathlon in White Lake, NC. This will consist of a 750 meter swim, a 14 mile bike ride, and a 5k run. Then, from April 25th-27th, we will be attending Tuckfest, a multi-day outdoors competition. We will be participating in everything from half marathons and mountain biking to kayaking and wakeboarding. The team bonding from camping and racing all weekend will be a great way to
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end the semester and reward ourselves for our hard work! We can’t wait to share how these events go!
“The team bonding from camping and racing all weekend will be a great way to end the semester and reward ourselves for our hard work!”
Photo Provided by Women’s Baksetball Team
Team Update
Women’s Basketball by Elena Kacan, Secretary
The Women’s Club Basketball team traveled to Athens, Georgia this past weekend to compete at a regional level. They started off in a pool of 3 teams with Columbus State and Georgia Southern and from there things got exciting. Although they lost the first game, Georgia Southern was a close match up. Beth Pittman scored at the last second putting App
State up by 1 point when the buzzer went off. They couldn’t have been more excited. From there, they faced Clemson in bracket play and ended up winning that game by 2 points, you could say it was down to the wire! ASU was on a roll but after playing Columbus State for the second time on Sunday morning, it was time to go home. They played great against one of the best teams they’ve seen so far. The Appalachian men’s team also attended the tournament but went 1-2 that lead into single elimination.
Both teams were able to support each other throughout the entire tournament which was beneficial to both groups. The women will be hosting a home tournament March 29th at the SRC and can’t wait for friends and family to watch them play.
“They played great against one of the best teams they’ve seen so far.”
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Photo Provided by Equestrian Team
Team Update
Equestrian by Halie Cunningham, Secretary
This past month has been an extremely busy one for the Appalachian State Equestrian Team. The team spent several weeks preparing for the home dressage show, hosted in Taylorsville, NC on February 23rd. Hunt seat rider and show coordinator, Haley McCune, did an exceptional job organizing the show and dealing out chores and volunteer positions, which includes everything from training the
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show horses, to concessions, to cleaning the barn for a spotless impression. It was the smoothestgoing show yet! In other news, this past Sunday, just a week after the ASU show, the dressage team competed at Virginia Tech with the A team placing third overall against six other teams. Maddy Mason (junior) qualified for and won reserve champion at Dressage Seat Equitation Regionals. First Level dressage rider, Nikka
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Hronis (senior), won her division and is now tied for first in the region, which means a spot IDA Nationals may be in her near future! Final placings and national competitors will be decided after the Wake Forest dressage show on Saturday, March 22nd. Go Appalachian riders!
“It was the smoothest-going show yet!�
Executive’s Corner by Tyler Grandis, Club Sports Executive
The semester is in full swing for all of our teams with the winter sports ending their seasons and the spring sports starting theirs. The Club Sports Council meeting was extremely productive with a vote on how to allocate the left over Club Sports funds. We also had Executive Officer nominations with around ten people being nominated for the positions next year. The Council has worked hard on a variety of events from a Chili’s fundraiser to a inter-team dodgeball tournament. The Council is also working to help our community with a humane society event scheduled for April 13th and a Queen St. clean up on April 26th. It shows real leadership when the students of this program balance these events with running their teams and school work. Keep it up!
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CLUB SPORTS ILLUSTRATED /// March 7th, 2014