Sports

On October 15th, The University of Alabama and Tennessee football teams faced off against one another in Neyland Stadium, Tennessee’s home field. This annual matchup has ended in Alabama victory for 15 consecutive years. Alabama was ranked 3rd overall and Tennessee ranked 6th, both teams were undefeated. After a nail biting game, The Vols upset the Tide with a stunning victory by a 40 yard field goal to decide it. The end score was 52-49.

This immediately caused a frenzy of Vols fans to rush the field. During the pandemonium, they took the field goal posts, which they hadn’t done since 1998. The Vol fans carried the goal posts to the nearby Tennessee River, where they threw them in. As the madness ensued, a video of UT President Randy Boyd, was recorded smoking a cigar from his box suite where he stated, “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to do this every year”. 

Later that evening, the SEC fined UT $100,000. The University also had to cover the cost of buying new field posts. Despite the deterrents, the SEC continues to have issues with fans storming the fields. The SEC hired more security personnel to prevent this issue after an uprising of fans rushing onto the field. In addition to this, the SEC implemented a regulation stating that the fans who storm the field could receive punishments such as expulsion from the facility, the charge of trespassing, and the loss of future ticket privileges. 

Despite the excitement of storming the field, it does cause some issues. After the Vols victory, Nick Saban and Alabama receiver, Jermaine Burton, were confronted by a fan who had to be tackled in order for the teams to get off the field. Saban stated “I talked to him(Burton). He was scared. I was scared. Some of our other players were scared.”

Andrew Siegel, TCU’s sports field manager, gave insight to the lengthy process of cleaning up after the field has been stormed. Siegel and his 8 person team have to clean the debris from the storming so that their lawn mowers don’t get damaged. Siegel states “I think we found cell phones…We’ve also picked up sunglasses, a pocket knife, lighters, peanuts, pizza crust and beer cans.” TCU, UT, and other schools have real grass, so it’s Siegel’s team and other field teams’ job to maintain it. Mid-October is the prime time for ryegrass (which makes the fields look green in the winter) seeds to be planted. After the fields are stormed, the new seeds are compacted and die.

Recently, it’s much more commonplace to storm the field than it used to be. FiveThirtyEight, a statistics company, calculated that there were 27 instances in 2020, 14 in 2019, and 10 in 2018. Dr. Stephen P. Gonzalez, an executive board member for the Association of Applied Sport Psychology explains this rise, “In a post-COVID year, I think that there’s just a lot of built up or pent up need for normalcy. When athletics are a large part of a school’s identity and in some of these major conferences, it’s an opportunity for people to kind of feel like they’re a part of something that’s bigger than them…. So this is almost like a release valve for a lot of people.”. 

Nick McKenna, Texas A&M’s assistant athletic director for sports fields, describes the recent storming of the field as “ some of what makes college athletics great. Is it ideal? No. But, at the same time, you embrace it. You can’t change it. Have fun. We’ll do our job and do everything to cover it and make the field right afterward.” With the College Football Championship game fastly approaching, all eyes are on the field and the fans for the outcome of one of the nation’s most watched sporting events.

After having an unbelievably successful career at Myers Park, Megan Frost has been furthering her education and love for field hockey in the heart of northern California at Stanford University. She is majoring in Management and Science Engineering and planning to work for Blackstone, a private investment company in the Metropolitan Area of New York. 

“I mean, it was always the dream to wanna go to the best school in the country with the best weather and also a great field hockey team,” says Frost. Frost never had her eyes necessarily set on Stanford, but it was an obvious “no-brainer” when she was accepted. 

In her time at Myers Park, Frost was a key player on the varsity women’s field hockey team and the women’s soccer team. She fell in love with field hockey during her freshman year as a Mustang, “I started loving it a little, actually a lot more than soccer.” 

Frost committed to field hockey, graduating from Myers Park in 2019 as the leader in goals with a total of 115 in addition to 85 assists. Making history for our school, Frost was the first-ever four time MVP (Most Valuable Player). 

Bringing that same energy to Stanford Field Hockey, Frost entered the team her freshman year and started all 23 games, had nine shots on goal, and three assists. “College hockey is a completely different sport than high school field hockey, it’s a lot faster, and you have to think a lot faster, it’s never on grass or field turf, it’s always gonna be on astroturf.”

Shortly after an unbelievable first season, the sport took an unexpected turn during her sophomore year at Stanford. It was announced that her university was to cut 11 varsity sports, field hockey being one of them. The fans and athletes fought for 10 months hoping that their beloved teams could keep their rightful spots in the Stanford community. However, field hockey was the only fall sport preparing for another season just around the corner of the devastating announcement. Field hockey played their “final season” and made it to the postseason before thankfully being reinstated after Stanford announced its reversal in May 2021.

Even after the women’s field hockey team was put through the wringer, the fight wasn’t over. The team entered the 2021 American East Tournament with no goalie, subbing in some of their best players into the missing position. Nevertheless,  Frost and her team are grateful for the seasons they’ve had, “It’s been weird, but I would not trade it for the world. I’ve had so much fun here.”

This year, during Frost’s senior year at Stanford, the field hockey team went far into the American East Championship, “Just to see the growth in the team from having 11 players and no goalies to having two goalies and a full team this year, to see what you can do in a year. That overall was really exciting and empowering.” 

After graduating from Stanford, she’ll take on and revisit the east coast once again while working in New York for a private equity firm, Blackstone. She is currently enrolled as a management science and engineering major, often used to lead into finance and entrepreneurship. Taking that next step towards her future, Blackstone is a leading global investment business located right on Park Avenue in New York City. 

As Frost is rounding out her senior year, she hopes that all athletes wishing to follow in her footsteps as college athletes find what they’re truly passionate about and run with it. “I would encourage everyone to just keep up with the sport if they love it, and if they don’t love it, just try to look for something that they do love…” 

The city of Charlotte along with Quail Hollow Golf Club has made a name for itself as a notable venue for the PGA Tour. In 2003, the PGA Tour brought the Wachovia Championship to Quail Hollow Golf Club in South Charlotte, and as time moved on and the name changed to the Wells Fargo Championship, the tournament continues to return to charlotte except for two occasions. In 2017, The PGA Association of America brought the PGA Championship to Quail Hollow, making Quail Hollow Golf Club a part of an exclusive list of major championship host sites. The second occasion was this past September, when Quail Hollow hosted the 14th Presidents cup. The question is, what makes the city of Charlotte such a good venue for golf tournaments? 

The first answer is the golf course. Quail Hollow Golf Club was designed by George Cobb and reconstructed by Tom Fazio. The golf course opened on June 3rd, 1961, and was reconstructed in 1997. The property spans across 237 acres, allowing room for fans to roam and shops to be built, but also room for a long, challenging and rigorous golf course. The course plays at 7,445 yards from the back tees, making it one of the longest courses the tour visits. Quail Hollow Golf Club also features three of the best finishing holes in golf, which has been nicknamed “the green mile”. In a interview with Hoofprint staff Taylor Zarzour, the voice of golf’s major championships and the first tee starter at this years presidents cup, he spoke about the the finishing stretch, saying,“It’s a beautiful finish with a lot of risk reward shots, especially in the last three holes which is referred to as the green mile.”

However, The Green Mile is not the only part of the course that makes Quail Hollow Special. Throughout the 18 holes designed by George Cobb and Tom Fazio, Quail Hollow has every characteristic of a great golf course. Quail Hollow Golf Club is one of the reasons the Tour continues to return to Charlotte.

The next reason is all the city of Charlotte has to offer. Charlotte is now the 17th largest city in the country, and is growing at a very fast rate. North Carolina has over 500 golf courses and Charlotte itself has over 20 golf courses. With Charlotte now being identified as a golf city, the citizens are passionate about the game.  This passion was on full display at the Presidents Cup, with Crowds reaching up to 40,000 for each day of the event. Zarzour spoke on his experience as the starter at the presidents cup saying, “It was one of the neatest experiences I’ve ever had, And to have all that noise around us on the first tee in the stands was just incredible. I thought the event came off incredibly well for Charlotte.” Zarzour added later in the interview, “It felt bigger than any Presidents Cup that i’ve attended in the past.”

Charlotte brought a significant amount of passion, and energy to this year’s Presidents Cup. Only further proving the point why the city of Charlotte is a major reason the PGA Tour and other golf tournaments return to charlotte.

The PGA Tour recently gave the city of Charlotte and Quail Hollow Golf Club another affirmation by making the Wells Fargo Championship one of eight new elevated PGA tour events. The Wells Fargo Championship will be worth more FedEx Cup points and will feature a larger purse than ever before, bringing the best players and best competition you could find in a PGA Tour Event to Charlotte. In addition to this, the PGA Championship will also be returning to Quail Hollow Golf Club in May 2025. The combination of a great golf course, along with a city that is very passionate about the game of golf is what keeps big tournaments coming back to the Queen City.  

High school athletes are working harder than ever, with new standards for what defines a star athlete, the bar of excellence is a moving target. Across all sports, student athletes face inordinate pressure and challenges both in and out of their sport. Balancing intense training with the other responsibilities of being a high schooler can be overwhelming, and the training itself can put too much of a physical or mental strain on student-athletes. A term commonly mentioned in high school sports is “burn out”, when an athlete trains so intensely and so frequently, that they get to a point where they physically and mentally cannot train anymore. It is a struggle that is often overlooked, as student-athletes are expected to persevere through road blocks in their training to achieve the high standards expected of them. Athletes often face the idea of “peaking” or reaching the peak of their athletic career. The question is how much can you really improve within the limitations of your unique physical and mental capacity?

In an interview with 2021 Olympic Swimmer Claire Curzan, Claire talked about how she approaches training in and out of the pool. After discussing her experience as a young student athlete at the Olympics and the rigorous training leading up to it, she talks about the return to normalcy. “I definitely found it a little hard to get back up and go through those hard sets, but I’ve been talking to a lot of people and I think the mindset I’ve taken is to take one 25 at a time and one stroke at a time and trying to enjoy that.” Although Claire’s advice is swimming specific, it can be applied to athletes and training in any sport. Take each practice one step at a time, take training one step at a time, avoid focusing on the bigger, stressful, picture and focus on what is right in front of you today. Taking something one step at a time is common advice, but sometimes it is not the first answer an athlete uses when it comes to intense training. Oftentimes when an athlete is in a rigorous training cycle, it is hard to break the rhythm and the mindset, but this change can warrant protection against fatigue and can continue the passion and enjoyment of the sport. 

Curzan also mentions the importance of communication in the interview when she says, “Don’t be afraid to ask your coaches to switch things up, you’re definitely entitled to it, it’s your sport, you’re career, so if you need to talk to your coach to spice things up and get you excited about it.” It truly is crucial, especially in young athletes who are still maturing and understanding their bodies and their mental health, that communication is sustained between the coach and the athlete. It is vital to make sure the coach understands the athletes’ specific needs and uniquities in their mental and physical approach to the sport. The coach or team leader is always there as a support system. It is their job to be there for their athletes; not only to train them and help them achieve their goals on the field, court, or in the pool, but also outside those facilities.  Coaches should encourage and celebrate athletes’ personal growth through participating in the sport. 

These tips, ideas, questions, and concerns can be applied to any high-performing student-athletes who face stress or fatigue from their sport. Take a step back and think about another way to approach practice, or competition, along with ways that you can find support systems that are there to help you achieve your goals.