by Erika Plunkett | Jun 29, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
Summer is already over for the Lipscomb basketball teams, which have returned to campus to get acquainted with new faces among players and staff and begin preparations for their 2019-20 campaigns. Although these teams experienced very different stories last year—with the men’s team’s NIT Finals run earning them the ASUN Beam Award and the women experiencing one of the worst seasons in program history—both teams begin this season after tremendous turnover and tumult in their programs. The men’s team’s turnover came as the result of the success of prior coach Casey Alexander, who took the job at his alma mater, Belmont, after legendary coach Rick Byrd retired. In his six years at Lipscomb, Alexander’s teams had a 113-84 record, posting three straight 20-victory seasons, including the 29-8 campaign that took them to the NIT finals last season. The year before, he led the Bisons to their first-ever NCAA March Madness berth. It was a lack of success that shaped the change in the women’s program. In four years, coach Greg Brown posted a 44-164 record. The Lady Bisons finished last season 4-25 in a campaign that included a 19-game losing streak. The school looked for new vigor from a new leader for that program. After a number of player departures, two first-time Division I head coaches, men’s basketball’s Lennie Acuff and women’s basketball’s Lauren Sumski, take over as the new head coaches of Lipscomb’s basketball programs. Joining these two are four new assistants and 12 new players, including eight on the men’s team, bringing a new vibe to Lipscomb basketball. During their battle to the NIT Finals in Madison...
by Cavin Jacobson | Jun 28, 2019 | Arts and Entertainment, News Slider
Tradition, tradition. Bartlett Sher’s rendition of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ is the 21st-century update for a tale about tradition. Sher’s 2015 reboot is currently on its national tour and is at the TPAC June 25-30. This classic musical brings the difficulties of facing changes to long-standing traditions to a younger audience with a story that still resonates despite moving away from its historical period. ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ is a musical comedy set during the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The story follows a poor Jewish dairyman named Tevye (played by Yehezkel Lazarov in this production) as he confronts defiance of Jewish tradition among his three eldest daughters. Tevye’s story begins with him, as the patriarch of his family and having the most control in his household. He immediately starts losing control when his horse suffers an injury and he is forced to pull his milk-wagon himself. The play takes us through his life as he deals with the loss of control among his family — and how his love for his family helps him overcome his ties to tradition — or almost overcome it, as Tevye says, “Some things do not change for us. Some things will never change.” The original play was first performed on Broadway in 1964 and amass critical success it found many fans. This 2015 rendition of the 60’s hit, however, makes some noticeable changes to original Broadway hit. Some of these include turning Tevye into more of comedic relief and lessens the stage time for the younger two daughters’ stories. These changes, as well as others, had some waxing nostalgia for...
by Cavin Jacobson | Jun 24, 2019 | Arts and Entertainment, News Slider, Radio
BisonBot is in its 13th year of teaching engineering and robotics skills to students from elementary through high schools. The four-week camp, put on by Lipscomb Engineering, features four different groups that each spend a week learning engineering skills while building and operating robots. The robots range from simple moving gears to fully-functioning arms that can move objects off of a conveyor belt. The campers’ experience levels range from the first time with electronics, all the way up to advanced students who have been building robotics and engineering for years. “We don’t require that [the students] have any previous robotics knowledge before they come in, although a lot of the kids do,” said Ginger Reasonover, the coordinator of BisonBot camp. She is also a Science teacher at Lipscomb Academy. The four groups are the wee bots, who are between kindergarten and first grade, the juniors, who are between second and third grade, the fundamentals camp includes fourth through seventh graders and the advanced camp is for children that have had robotics experience. The advanced camp, for students in seventh through 12th grade, is mostly for students who have done the camp in the past. Every other year is the Robotics Academy where students learn how to program as well as build a robot. That will take place in next summer. The students get to take approximately five different robot projects that they built home with them. The youngest age group only builds their robots for a show-and-tell with the group and with their parents. The two older groups are split into teams of two and compete in a game...
by Grant Ledgister | Jun 21, 2019 | BREAKING NEWS, News Slider, Sports
Even though he didn’t hear his name called during the draft, the reigning ASUN Player of the Year is still headed to an NBA team. Garrison Mathews signed a two-way deal with the Washington Wizards. This means that, although he takes up one of the 17 roster spots for Washington, Mathews will spend the majority of his time with the Wizard’s G League affiliate (the NBA’s minor league, previously called the D League) this season. He will only be allowed to spend 45 days per season with the Wizards “big league” franchise itself throughout the duration of the contract. The Wizards were one of the four teams Mathews worked out for prior to the NBA Draft June 20. If Mathews does well enough in the G League to make it onto the primary Wizards squad, he would become the first Bison to play in an NBA game. Washington’s G League team is called the Capital City Go-Go. When at home, they play at St. Elizabeth’s East Entertainment and Sports Arena in Washington, D.C. The next step for Mathews is the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, which takes place from July 5-15 and will be his first chance to go against competition at the NBA level. If he is still on the roster after the Summer League, Mathews will play in the G League regular season that is 50-games long and begins in the fall. Official schedules for when the league begins have not yet been released. This move comes after Mathews’ record-breaking career at Lipscomb. He is the school’s all-time leading scorer (with 2,478 total points) and three-pointers...
by Grant Ledgister | Jun 18, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
The ASUN conference is getting a new challenger in athletics in the Bellarmine University Knights. The Knights will become the 10th school to join the conference, Bellarmine announced Tuesday morning. However, the university will not join the conference until the 2020-2021 school year. Bellarmine, located in Louisville, is a Catholic university with nearly 4,000 total students. It is set to become the only private D-I school in the state. The Knights were formerly competing in Division II athletics as a member of the Great Lakes Valley Conference, a conference it helped create in 1978. Out of its 22 varsity teams, Bellarmine will compete in 17 sports sponsored by the ASUN conference, including basketball and soccer. Men’s lacrosse, field hockey and wrestling will all compete at other conferences or with independent D-I status; men’s and women’s swimming will compete in the Coastal College Sports Association. Bellarmine showed it had the ability to compete at the D-II level, reaching the NCAA Division II basketball championship every year for the past 11 years and winning the tournament in 2012 under coach Scott Davenport. Knights baseball received an automatic berth into the D-II Midwest Regionals, and women’s soccer has reached its tournament six out of the past 10 years. “ASUN is a perfect fit for the Knights, because – like Bellarmine – every school in the conference is committed to putting students first,” Bellarmine Athletic Director Scott Wiegandt said in a press release. “Our student-athletes already meet Division I academic standards, and our players and coaches will be ready to compete when we join our new conference next year. The move to Division I...
by Erika Plunkett | Jun 13, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
Former Lipscomb pitcher Chris Kachmar was selected by the Chicago Cubs in the 28th round of the Major League draft. The right-hander, who finished his senior campaign with a record of 9-3 and a 3.61 era, was a first-team all-conference selection in the ASUN. He also earned ASUN pitcher of the week awards in two consecutive weeks at the end of the regular season for his performances against North Florida and Liberty. “I think the thing that stands out to everybody about Chris is just his work ethic and how much he has improved since we got him,” said Lipscomb coach Jeff Forehand. “He and our pitching coach, James Ogden, have worked really hard. It’s both of them, but it’s Chris’s work ethic and discipline to be the best that he can be that put him in that position to make all-conference this year and for the Cubs to recognize him as a draft pick.” Kachmar, from East Greenville, Pennsylvania, transferred before the 2017-18 season to Lipscomb from Palm Beach State College. At Palm Beach he compiled an earned run average of 3.79 as a sophomore. At Lipscomb in his junior year, Kachmar was able to step in and provide an immediate impact, but his season was cut short due to an injury. “He finished last May pretty much unable to pitch, so he went home for a few weeks, let that rest, came back, enrolled in summer classes and just started training and rehabbing his bad back,” Forehand said. “He got better, and he just continued to look forward every day to those 15 or 16 starts that...
