For more information on any of the club teams, visit the website:

clubsports.appstate.edu email us at: club sports@appstate.edu

or call us at the Student Recreation Center (828)262-2100

Director of UREC: Joe Carter carterjr@appstate.edu

Director of Club Sports: Erin Sanders sandersec1@appstate.edu

Coordinaters for Competitive Sports: Chris Carr carrcp@appstate.edu

Heather Marshall marshallha@appstate.edu

Executive Officers: Chad Deaver deaverce1@appstate.edu

Olivia Chason chasonom@appstate.edu

Patrick Sekel sekelp@appstate.edu

Janurary 22 Edition of Club Sports Illustrated Edited by Hallie Langley and Kristen Poole, UREC Publicity Programmers and App State Students

Cover and Table of contents photos taken from Club Sports Photo Gallery

Cycling: Cyclocross Update

Women’s Rugby: Why You Should Join Rugby

Equestrian: New Semester

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Archery: Nocked and Loaded

Cycling: Cyclocross Update

Women’s Rugby: Why You Should Join Rugby

Triathlon: Running for the Turkey

Equestrian: New Semester

Executive’s Corner

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Being a transfer student is like being a freshman two years in a row. Yes, it’s just as awkward and uncomfortable as it sounds. Indeed, the freshman searches for his or her niche in the perhaps not-so-temperate biome known as The University. For me, that niche is with Archery.

My memory of my first day at the range is crystal clear. I arrived anxious and emerged from my vehicle to dazzling sunlight over a field of people who totally knew what they were doing. Knowing that it was too late to turn back, I committed and marched up to the group. After asking who was in charge, I thrust forth my safety waiver with a shaky hand. And suddenly, I was in. One of the coaches sacrificed his entire practice time to teach me how to shoot and I realized that a new passion had been discovered.

Now, in my third semester of being in the Archery club, shooting my bow is the highlight of my week, and some of my best friends at App are the ones that I made through the team. I am now the Club Sports Council Representative for the team and work at the local bow shop: New River Archery Supply. The team has transitioned into being partnered with Club Sports Council, which adds the new excitement of collegiate competition. However, the beauty of a team remains; one that is welcoming to beginners while remaining conducive to the development of even the most seasoned archer, a clear reflection of the “attracting and retaining students in competitive sports activity” motto that Club Sports has adopted. I love how my experience at Appalachian has included out-of-class experiences that I would have likely not been able to learn outside of such a supportive setting.

All Photos by: Colton Ryan Blake

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Nocked and Loaded

ARCHERY

ARTICLE BY:

BRITTANY ROUNTREE

CLUB COUNCIL REP

Our first semester as a club sport did not involve many competitions due to the nature of the sport, but now that the spring is here the excitement of competing is stronger than ever. The much anticipated Rinehart 100 will be held on February 20th in Mount Airy and will include two days of 100 nerve racking shots at Rinehart’s full arsenal of 3-D targets. To put this in perspective, a typical 3-D competition includes hiking to only 25 targets. It’s time to get

“nocked and loaded!”

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Photo by:Jamie Williams

Photo by: Annie Pharr

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Appalachian State University Cycling Team sent four men to USAC Collegiate Cyclocross National Championships. The team led by Sophomore Byron Rice, was ranked the fourth men’s team in Division 1. The squad consisting of Byron Rice, Alex Jerome, Alan Garvick,

and Justin Evans placed 8th, 14th, 25th, and 59th respectively.

This wraps up a short collegiate cyclocross season, the team now looks forward to road season this spring.

ARTICLE BY:

JACOB RICHARD

ROAD VP

Photo by:Jamie Williams Photo by:Jamie Williams

CYCLING

Cyclocross Update

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WOMEN’S RUGBY

Why You ShouldJoin Rugby

ARTICLE BY:

RACHAL AROKIASAMY

CLUB SPORTS REP

All Photos by: Melissa Manderbach

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First off, I suppose I should start this article with the cons of playing rugby. I would assume that will probably weed out some of you, however, I hope you give this a chance and finish it all. Being on the team, I can rightly say that the pros outweigh the cons and I also know how you’re feeling if you think you want to join. There are so many generalizations about rugby that are very scary to think about. For example, there’s a chance you could get seriously injured, but honestly, that’s with any sport. Rugby honestly doesn’t have a great chance of injury over other contact sports. We’ll get into this soon, but for now, I would just like to say you won’t regret joining if that’s what you end up choosing (we really need you to join the team). So here are a few cons, I hope they don’t scare you off. Surely the first con that is running through your mind is the chance of injuries. So let me lay out some statistics for you. Considering you can only join this team as a female, this static may ease some of your distress. According to an article in Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach, “men have a 30% higher overall incidence rate of injury than women”. If that doesn’t ease your worry, Dr. Micheli brought up the point that “The former president of the American College of Sports Medicine found a 10% injury incidence rate in American club rugby, much lower than the 52% found in NCAA collegiate football” and that ten percent is probably a lot of guys. Just because there is a low rate of injury doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen at all, but you’ll be put in the best hands to help that from happening. Another con may be time commitment. Although this isn’t a varsity sport, we still do take it seriously and put in a lot of work. We practice Monday-Thursday, usually from 6pm-8pm or 8pm-10pm (yes, that’s at night).

However, we understand that school comes first and if you have to miss practice every so often, that’s okay. There’s not much that can outweigh this other than the fact that you’ll have a blast! A con that I personally had was the ever increasing speed of my meal plan depletion. A “rugby appetite” is a real thing, people. Those are the main reasons people don’t join, but we hope to see you come out! Now here are the pros (for those of you who weren’t scared off). You can come out the first week and see if you like it! You don’t have to make any commitments for the first few days, so why not try it out? With any sport comes exercise and that alone has many benefits and can help you keep a good physical state. If you want to get in shape I can promise that this team will get you there. With rugby specifically, it is a contact sport… A very rough one at that. For some people, rugby is a place where people can ease the troubles of life. Of course they don’t rage out on you, but it can help you release some problems you may be struggling with. Through AHO Women’s Rugby and Club Sports, you can learn leadership skills, communication skills, and many more assets that you can use on and off the field. The biggest benefit, to me, is that you find a family. The rugby team is like one huge family and we stick by each other no matter what. Rugby is a sport that is built on the support of your team and we bring that to each other even when we aren’t playing. If you want an easy way to make new friends, join the team! We will be glad to welcome you with open arms.

Once AHO, always AHO

For more information about rugby you can contact any of our officers (you can find our emails on clubsports.appstate.edu).

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EQUESTRIAN

NEW SEMESTER

ARTICLE BY:

HALEY McCUNE

PRESIDENT

Photo by: Charlotte White

Photo by: Charlotte White

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After having a wonderful start to the year the Appalachian Equestrian team is excited for another semester. The hunt seat had a wonderful showing semester placing third overall as a team at the High Point Show. The western team placed third overall at their Martin Community College Show last semester. The dressage team had a wonderful show season last year. Each member looks forward to another semester to showcase their abilities at their respective shows. We hope to continue improving and learning. In addition to the show season, the team is looking forward to hosting their very first Hunter schooling show, which will be open to the public. The show will be held on April 23rd at the Blowing Rock Horse Show Preserve. The team is familiar with hosting collegiate level shows because we host at least one Intercollegiate Dressage Association show each year. However, the team felt that it was time to try something new this semester. We hope that hosting a schooling show can help us to grow together as a team and learn more about the organization and preparation that goes into planning a show. Here’s to a new semester and a new year. The team looks forward to helping our members become the best riders that they can be for another year.

ARTICLE BY:

Photo by: Charlotte White

Photo by: Corin Rash

Photo by: Molly Bostancic

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TRIATHLON

RUNNING FOR THE TURKEY

Last semester, a few members on the Triathlon Team decided to run in the intramural 5K. The race was called “Give ‘em the Bird 5K” and it took place last December. We had about 8 team members participate in the race; it was a challenging race. I know the race said 5K but the race actually consisted of 3.4 miles of hilly trails at the Greenway but that did not stop us from having a good time and cheering on our members through the hills. It was a cold, sunny morning at the start of the race. Some parts of the trail were iced over so it was entertaining running on this type of terrain. The Triathlon Team is used to running on roads during our races so we like to switch things up and sign up for races that involve some trails. The best part of the race was that the female and male winners received their own frozen turkey!

Our team was blushing with pride that our very own Katie Bond was the female winner of the 5K and got to take home that turkey! As you can tell in the picture, Ms. Bond was very excited she won the turkey. I was able to interview her a month later about her prize and this is what she had to say, “It was pretty dope winning the turkey! I’ve never really won anything huge from races. I didn’t really know what to do with it. I tried to cook it but it takes a lot more work and prep than I thought so unfortunately it’s still frozen in my friend’s freezer”. All I can say is that I better be getting some of this turkey when our team meetings start next week. A few other members on the team won raffle prizes. These prizes ranged from shirts from local restaurants, Comeback Shack gift cards, and Mountain Khakis gift cards. Once the race was over and the prizes were given out, the team all went to Los Arcoiris for some carb loading. The frozen turkey was sadly not able to join us at the table.

Overall the race was quite lovely. The team would like to thank the Intermural Sports coordinators and UREC for putting on this race. The race was free for all students and had wonderful prizes at the end. We recommend that more students take advantage of this race for the years to come!

Did I mention this race also gives out a free race shirt?

ARTICLE BY:

CAROLINEHELLEN

SECRETARY

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Photo by: Chris Carr

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Executive Corner Article by: Olivia Chason

This semester has already been very busy for the Executive Officers! We started off the semester by coming back a few days early to attend our conference. At the conference, we worked very hard at brainstorming some new ideas for this upcoming semester, as well as going over some stuff from last semester. We have three big events in April that we will be planning throughout the semester. Patrick will be taking the lead on our Annual Budgetary Proposal, Chad will be planning the New Officer Symposium, and Olivia will be working on the End-of-the-Year Banquet. We started our work on all of these events during the conference and are off to a great start. Another big item we went over at the conference was the proposals for three new teams that were submitted at the end of the fall semester. We are really looking forward to going through the proposal process and working with potential teams. We also started working on a new idea we had for this semester! We decided that we would like to bring all of our committees of Club Sports Council together to plan one big event for our program this semester. We have narrowed it down to three options and will be bringing them to the Council this upcoming week to decide upon. We think that this event will be a huge success and we can’t wait to see where it will go! Finally, the Executives are still working on their destinations from last semester. Chad has been working hard with the editor of The Appalachian and they are hoping to get Club Sports in each edition of the newspaper! Each team has also been asked to submit a Publicity Chair to help make this possible. Olivia and Patrick are both working hard on writing up proposals to bring to Council for both of their destinations. Hopefully, these will be ready to present to Council in February. Although our semester will be very busy, we are so excited for all of the big things that are happening in the Club Sports program!

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LEARN MORE ABOUT CLUB SPORTS

GO TO CLUBSPORTS.APPSTATE.EDU

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