by Hunter Patterson | Aug 25, 2011 | News Slider, Sports
Hard nosed, honest, tough and a leader. All the words have been used to describe Coach Pat Summitt for over 30 years. Now, just days after she announced that she had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, those words have never rang truer. Coach Summitt has been the head coach of the Lady Vols at the University of Tennessee since she was 22. Yes, some of her players were older than her. She drove the van to away games. She and her players slept in locker rooms because money was tight. Some ladies even made the team based on the fact that they owned a vehicle. For Coach Summitt, those were the tough times. Now, Lady Vol fans and admirers of the Basketball Hall of Fame coach are calling this a hard time. Summitt refuses to, though. “There will be no pity party,” Summitt told the Washington Post in an interview on Sunday. “I’ll be sure of that.” Summitt says she had felt that something was off for a while, saying she “just felt something different.” Once her Lady Vols were eliminated from the Regional final of the NCAA tournament she visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. seeking any sort of explanation to why she had these lapses of memory. Those lapses were everything from forgetting what time she needed to be at the gym, losing her car keys more than once per day and forgetting what type of scheme or play to run at a certain time during a game. “I think last year there was some adjustment in games,” Lipscomb’s women’s basketball coach Frank Bennett said....
by Hunter Patterson | Jun 9, 2011 | News Slider
For most students at Lipscomb, Advance means making friends, winning Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and revealing secrets during intense games of fruit basket turnover. For Jim Thomas, however, Advance runs much deeper than that. Dr. Thomas, a communications professor and an assistant to the president, started the Advance program 22 years ago with hopes of keeping incoming freshman at Lipscomb for the entirety of their college careers. “I see myself as more of a problem solver as opposed to someone who has great creativity,” Dr. Thomas said. “I always wondered why Lipscomb students transferred to Harding and vice versa.” After looking at the data, which had been complied after 20 years of research, Thomas soon found out that nearly 50 percent of those who start college never get their degree. Thomas then began to wonder if students were simply not as smart as they had thought upon entering college. “Surprisingly it is the brighter students who tend to drop out and never graduate,” Thomas said. “What is making the student say, ‘I’m just not going to do this?’” The main thing that Dr. Thomas found out was that most of the students’ decisions were made very early on in the college experience. He then concluded that if students were able to have a pleasant freshman year it was more likely they would finish college by walking the line and shaking the hand of the president instead of leaving during Spring break and never returning. “Having started at Lipscomb as a transfer student in 1967, I came in thinking that our registration process had a real problem with it,” Thomas said. “We...
by Hunter Patterson | Apr 18, 2011 | News Slider, Sports
“What is a winner? Someone who wins everyone contest, but there is not anyone like that. A winner is someone that never lets a failure or a loss be his or her final destination.” Those were some of the encouraging and inspiring words spoken by Mike Krzyzewski at the Third Annual Don Meyer Evening of Excellence held on Saturday night. Better known as Coach K, Krzyzewski has won four NCAA Championships as the head basketball coach at Duke. Elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001, Coach K boasts the most wins in NCAA Tournament history with 78. Saturday, though, he was not coaching the Blue Devils to victory in Cameron Indoor. He was instead being introduced by fellow Hall of Famer Don Meyer to speak in Allen Arena. University president Randy Lowry started off the evening welcoming the sold out crowd to Allen Arena. Lowry also highlighted the several accomplishments that Lipscomb’s athletic program had achieved over the calendar year. Following a short video, athletic director Philip Hutcheson took the stage and talked about the impact that Don Meyer left on him and the campus. On the stage next was former Lipscomb basketball coach Don Meyer. Coaching at Lipscomb from 1975-1999, Meyer led Lipscomb to victory 665 times. The Evening of Excellence is not only named after Meyer, but it embodies his character as well. Better known as Coach, he boiled the game of basketball down to the ‘little things.’ “Everyone makes notes, everyone says yes ma’am and no ma’am, and everyone picks up trash,” Meyer said. Unable to attend last year’s event because of scheduling conflicts,...
by Aaron Schmelzer | Apr 15, 2011 | News Slider
UPDATE : A statement from President Lowry on the tree removal. Please upgrade your browser After two weeks of rain and windstorms, with gusts measuring in excess of 50 miles-per-hour, Lipscomb is forced to say goodbye to some beloved trees. On Friday afternoon, April 15, campus safety and security personnel began a second round of trim work on the “wishbone tree.” Storms from this past Monday and April 4 caused many large branches to fall from the tree, and campus safety cut down many of the branches in danger of falling as a safety precaution. Click here to view video footage of campus safety trimming the tree earlier this week. Student Government Association President Jackson Sprayberry confirmed that this, the “wishbone tree,” and the other larger tree in Bison Square will be “coming down soon.” Sprayberry sent this email out to the student body this afternoon, offering explanation and future plans for Bison Square: “While we often become uneasy in accepting big changes, it is necessary for the tree in Bison Square to come down. The tree is over-matured, disease-ridden, and nearly rotten. Pieces of the tree have been crashing to the ground in every storm we have had this season, thus creating a heightened concern for student safety. But don’t fret! Your Student Government has already made plans to implant two maple trees in the square that, in a few short years, will provide increased shade from the current trees and also provide beautiful, colorful foliage each Autumn.” Students seem upset about the trees they’ve come to know and love being chopped down. Senior family relations major...
by Aaron Schmelzer | Apr 11, 2011 | News Slider
After a limb fell from the tree on the south side of Bison Square during this morning’s rain storm, Facilities was brought in to clean out the rest of the dead limbs on the ailing trees in the square. The dead limbs were considered a safety hazard. Please upgrade your...
