Sports Insight

Clemson Formula SAE off to a hot start this fall

Posted on by Kayla Rogers

By Nathan Inman

Clemson Formula SAE (CUFSAE) is hitting the ground running this semester. With multiple competitions under its belt, CUFSAE is already seeing success through the early portion of the semester.

Just days after the semester officially began, CUFSAE started off on the right foot on Aug. 21 and 22 when the team traveled to Summit Point Motorsports Park in West Virginia for the Pittsburgh Shootout. Team lead for CUFSAE, Kyle Jobman, spoke to RHBSSI to detail the early accomplishments.

“We had two competitions already, one at the end of August, the Pittsburgh Shootout up in West Virginia. We placed fourth out of 25 there for internal combustion,” Jobman said.

In addition to placing fourth overall, the team placed third in the south autocross competition and fifth in the north autocross.

The rubber then hit the road at the Michelin Laurens Proving Grounds in Laurens, South Carolina. There, the team placed third overall with a first-place finish in the skidpad competition, second in the internal combustion, and third in the acceleration and endurance events.

Jobman said he anticipates the team will compete in one more competition later this semester as it shifts its focus to the design and completion of its 2027 build. He added that the competitions so far have given CUFSAE multiple opportunities to test new components before building next year’s car.

“It’s been very helpful,” Jobman said. “We actually, at LPG, ran a test with two water pumps for our cooling system, because we’re looking at adding two water pumps this year. So it was helpful to get that data and actually see if it would be beneficial to us.”

Jobman also mentioned that the team has looked at data on other elements of the car, which has allowed them to identify additional areas for improvement.

Alongside the competitions and ongoing design of CUFSAE’s next build, the team has also been hard at work recruiting new members.

“Recruitment has been very good,” Jobman said. “I think after all the recruiting events, we had about a little over 120 new members join the team. We’ve been getting them a bunch of new-member projects to get them kind of into the flow of how we do things as a team.”

Jobman added that for the team’s final event of the semester in November, there is no cap on the number of members allowed to attend, giving new members their first taste of live competition.

CUFSAE was also a recent beneficiary of RHBSSI’s awarding of funds to multiple Clemson student motorsports organizations, which, Jobman explained, will help the team immensely as it begins planning for its major Michigan competition in May.

“That $2,500 will definitely go towards helping us out a lot,” Jobman said. “We’ll probably end up buying competition tires with that; those usually come in at about $1,000 a set. So we’ll probably end up buying two sets of those, and that’s really helpful for us because, going into Michigan, we want to have a fresh set of tires. And then obviously testing leading up to Michigan, we want to use a fresh set of tires there, too, so that should help us out there.”

With a hot start to the semester for CUFASE, the team is only just getting started, and it appears that the sky might truly be the limit.

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An impactful passion project: Chris Corr partners with Colorado Golf Association, True Temper over Summer 2026

Posted on by Kayla Rogers

By Aubrey Tarbox

Oct. 4 is National Golf Lovers’ Day!

Working outside his typical research area focused on collegiate athletics, faculty fellow Chris Corr, Ph.D. – principal lecturer and program coordinator of Clemson’s Athletic Leadership program – collaborated with the Colorado Golf Association over the summer. The association sought to better understand the developmental benefits of their junior caddy program, beyond the traditional motivations of a typical summer job for a student. 

Surveying caddies over the course of the summer, Corr and his colleagues found that the junior caddies developed useful skills – not just in golf – such as timeliness, organization, and responsibility while also cultivating valuable professional networks while out on the golf course. 

“Those are just broad social skills that are positive for everyone to have,” Corr said. “It doesn’t necessarily matter what job you have as a high schooler in the summer, like I could be a lifeguard at a pool and I could have the same developmental components. This project was looking at those developmental aspects of sport with caddying rounds of golf as a context.” 

Through the Colorado Golf Association’s junior caddy program, high school students work toward eligibility for the Evans Foundation Golf Scholarship. The Evans Scholarship provides a full cost of attendance scholarship for more than 300 high school students heading off to college each year. 

“If you caddy enough rounds – which are called loops – and meet academic expectations and service obligations, you can qualify for the Evans Scholarship, which covers the entirety of costs associated with college attendance,” Corr said. 

While the primary motivations for junior caddies participating in the program are based around eligibility for the Evans Scholarship, the findings from Corr’s study this summer indicate that junior caddies developed skills from their experience in the program. So even if they don’t receive the Evans Scholarship, junior caddies’ experiences within the program still have value. 

Corr was also recruited by the manufacturer True Temper to work on a similar project he completed with Callaway Topgolf last summer, but this time with driver clubs instead of putters. 

“This fall we’ll begin data collection in collaboration with faculty at the University of Louisville and the University of New Mexico,” Corr said. “What we’re looking at is: if you’re told a driver is supposed to make you hit the ball farther, do you genuinely believe that? And when you actually go out and hit balls, if I show you data that it doesn’t really do anything, what is your response to that?” 

Corr’s passion projects with golf stems from his connections within the Clemson community and a familial tie to the sport. 

Toney Penna, an Italian-American professional golfer and designer of clubs and gear, was his great-grandfather.  

“He was one of the first major golf club designers in the United States,” Corr said. “He was a first-generation Italian immigrant, went through Ellis Island with his parents as a young child, and he played professional golf in the United States.
He played at the Masters, had a professional career. He was connected all over, being of Italian ancestry at that time period, the 40’s and 50’s, he was connected to a lot of celebrities that were Italians. So some really neat stories passed down within our family that I’ve always gravitated to for sure.” 

To learn more about Corr and what he’s currently studying in collegiate athletics, check out his faculty profile and follow along on RHBSSI social for updates on National Golf Lovers’ Day. 

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From the screen to 3D: Ethan Kung, Ph.D., uses topological data analysis for cardiovascular research

Posted on by Kayla Rogers

Sept. 29 is World Heart Day!

Faculty fellow and associate professor in mechanical engineering and bioengineering, Ethan Kung, Ph.D., founded the Cardiovascular Modeling and Experimentation Research Laboratory (CMERL) in 2014, and the research conducted there can save lives. Part of his most recent research focuses on how to calculate the possibility of having a stroke in a patient with stenosis in their carotid artery.

The carotid artery is a major artery that carries blood to the brain, and stenosis is the narrowing of the artery. For some patients, stenosis can cause a blood clot that travels to the brain, causing a stroke.

“When a patient comes in with that stenosis, right now, doctors don’t know what to do, whether they need to have surgery and remove it, or just to leave it,” Kung said. “A clinical goal is we need to figure out a way to determine, if a patient has a stenosis, what their risk of stroke is.”

Over the past couple of years, Kung has used computer simulations to study blood flow patterns across different patients. The goal is to test if clinicians can differentiate between stroke and non-stroke patients based on their blood flow patterns.

The computer simulations produced 3D maps of velocity and blood pressure within the arteries using a data analysis method called topological data analysis. This helps researchers, like Kung, turn large amounts of data into smaller shapes.

“Right now, the 3D map, the velocity, you could have millions of nodes, each one has three directions of velocity, that’s a lot of data,” Kung said. “So, the analysis turns this large amount of data into something that’s smaller, that has shapes that we could study, and we’re trying to see if we could distinguish this stroke to the non-stroke patients with this analysis. And if we do find a difference, then we will be able to trace back to interpret what this means in terms of blood flow.”

By simplifying the data, there’s hope to find the differences between the two patient groups.

“If we could identify some kind of big-picture blood flow differences, then we can learn something mechanistic about what causes the blood clot and potentially be able to help distinguish these patient groups better,” Kung said.

For this year’s World Heart Day, remember to eat healthy, exercise daily and check out the CMERL to learn more about Kung’s cardiovascular research.

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Clemson Tiger Racing members reflect on rally race experience

Posted on by Kayla Rogers

By Nathan Inman

The American Rally Association hosted the Overmountain Rally in Newport, Tennessee, on
Sept. 18-19. Among the numerous volunteers in attendance at the event were several members
of the Clemson Tiger Racing team.


The opportunity to attend the event all began when the head of the ARA academic relations
team reached out to CTR about volunteering as marshals for the race weekend. After an
extremely successful and enjoyable weekend, there is now an opportunity for CTR to create a
deeper relationship with the rally organization.


“We’re looking to form an academic partnership with the ARA, which will provide our members,
in the future, opportunities to go work in the sport of rally, whether that’s with teams, in the crews
or as engineers, or to volunteer at rallies moving forward,” Matt Flaim, assistant team principal
and driver for CTR, said. “It also opens the door to potentially, sometime in the future, create a
collegiate rally program for us, which would enable us to have our own rally car and compete
against other schools who already do something similar, like UNOH and Oregon.”


Throughout its brief history, CTR has primarily focused on endurance racing, which would
seemingly make the transition to adding a rally component a bit difficult. However, several
members of the team appear eager to make it happen after their experience.


“We were all on a group chat together after the rally, and we were all starting to look at Subarus
on Facebook Marketplace, because we were like, ‘dude, we have to get involved in this,’” said
Hadley Smith, operations lead for CTR. “It’s so much fun, and we need to — our next CTR car is
1000 percent gonna be a Subaru that we can just rip around and rally race with.”


Going into the event, many of the CTR members had varying levels of familiarity with rally
racing. Many of those who said they had no clue about the motorsport before the event now say
they are fans for life.


“I’ve been racing for 10 years, from carts, formula cars, sports cars, on tarmac, on the road, on
street courses, never off-road, but I’ve been aware of Rally,” Matteo Naranjo, lead driver for
CTR, said. “It was a unique experience that’ll definitely influence me on where I want to go next
in my racing career.”


“Rally is such a diverse motorsport, which I had no clue of,” CTR member Garrison Dull said.
“I’ve seen the clips growing up, never really followed it to a T, but when you look at it, it was like,
you’d have a driver who’s a 68-year-old Hollywood stunt driver, all the way to Def Leppard’s lead
guitarist. You’d have a 17-year-old who was a co-driver, I mean, you’d have a carpenter, a
veteran, you name it — it was such a diverse sport.”


For other members, though, the experience was a dream come true for lifelong rally fans.


“I’m a die-hard Subaru fan since as long as I can remember,” said Victor Cruz, race engineer
and mechanic for CTR. “I’ve been watching on TV since as long as I can remember, but I’ve
never been able to go to one because I just never knew where they were. So, with CTR, they
finally gave me the chance to see this in person, and I’m eternally grateful.”


“I knew what Rally was because of that, of course, but I had only really seen clips,” CTR
mechanic Brody Heinick said. “I hadn’t really fully gone in and watched Rally, and just seeing all
my favorite cars in their element at the rally up close… it was just really awesome to see that out
there.”


For one team member, the experience created a full-circle moment.


“I grew up in Ireland, and rally is kind of what got me into motorsports,” Ryan Oliver, head of
media for CTR, said. “I grew up around a lot of rally drivers and corner marshals, and now, after
spending the last few years getting more into motorsports and becoming a corner marshal last
weekend, it just showed a whole different light on rally from what I remember as a kid.”


With the experience now having come and gone, the future of CTR could very well be defined
by the event. Only time will tell if — or, more likely, when — the team will make the ambitious
leap into rally racing.

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Clemson Baja celebrates completion of brand-new test track

Posted on by Kayla Rogers

By Nathan Inman

Earlier this year, Clemson Baja SAE partnered with the Clemson construction science and
management department to construct a brand-new test track with support from Blanchard CAT.
Within months, the track was fully designed and constructed, giving Baja a new way to test its
vehicle ahead of competition.


In prior years, Clemson Baja would travel to competitions with the durability of its builds not
completely tested. The new test track now gives the team the chance to diagnose and fix any
issues before making the trip to compete, an opportunity, the team says, that will prove
immensely helpful.


“We’re super excited to have it for this upcoming year, get the car done a couple weeks earlier
and be able to actually get out there, test stuff, break stuff and then resolve it,” chief engineer
Kevin Blakeney said. “You can only simulate so much — getting out there and putting the car
actually in a situation and getting that testing done. If something breaks, we can go in, figure out
what in our simulation was wrong and how to resolve that problem before competition.”


While the test track was completed ahead of Baja’s summer competition, their vehicle was not
race-ready, leaving the team unable to test it on the track before traveling to New York.
Blakeney said testing the build would have allowed them to catch certain issues that they did
not find until the competition began.


“Unfortunately, the car was not done in time to actually test on (the track) beforehand, but we
have gotten out there and tested a few times afterwards,” Blakeney explained. “It’s definitely
safe to say that, had we been able to get it out there earlier on the test track, we would have
found a couple of the issues that we had to resolve at competition when we found them.”


As Clemson Baja enjoys the test track and the advantages that come with it, Blakeney said that
other schools have shown interest in traveling to Clemson to run the track ahead of competition.
Earlier this month, ahead of Clemson football’s home opener against Georgia Southern, the
Georgia Southern Baja SAE team traveled to Clemson to run the course.


“Really, it was very helpful for both of our teams,” Blakeney said. “We got to see what each
other does, and how each of our different cars and our setups run on the track. It was also nice
because they got into the competition coming up in a couple weeks, and it was good for them to
be able to get out and rip on the car.”


Blakeney added that the Georgia Southern team found an issue with their vehicle after running
it on the track — an issue that likely would have gone undiagnosed if not for the test session.
Since that track day, Blakeney says that other schools have also reached out with interest in
testing on the track. As interest continues to rise, the possibility of an unofficial competition
weekend rises with it.


“We’ve definitely gotten some interest in some schools coming down moving forward,” Blakeney
said. “I think it’s a great thing to have them out there. With the construction science department
being willing to continue adding onto our track, we would love to get it a little bigger, a couple
more obstacles, and maybe even host a local, non-official competition where we bring in
schools from the Carolinas and Georgia, and maybe up in Virginia.”


With the school year now fully underway, Clemson Baja is hard at work on its new build for next
year’s competition. Time will only tell as to just how beneficial the team’s new test track will
prove to be.

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Former Clemson Tigers look to make an impact on NASCAR’s Chase 

Posted on by Kayla Rogers

By Nathan Inman

When college football players graduate and their time as a collegiate athlete draws to a close, they often wind up in careers within the football industry. Whether it be playing professionally or coaching at different levels, those are the typical paths former college football players take. 

Two former Clemson Tigers opted to take a much less-traveled path. 

Landon Walker, ’12, and Jonathan “Tig” Willard, ’13, played football together at Clemson over their four seasons, including the 2011 ACC Championship game, which delivered Clemson its first conference title in 20 years. 

When the two players transitioned into their professional careers, they saw their paths take them in a very different direction than they had expected — a direction that has led the former teammates to become competitors. 

Landon Walker leads the Tigers down the hill alongside head coach Dabo Swinney. (Provided by Parker Anderson)

Landon Walker 

Walker went undrafted in the 2012 NFL draft, but later intended to sign with the Cincinnati Bengals as an undrafted free agent. The only thing that stood between Walker and his NFL dreams was a physical. 

However, the physical revealed arthritis in his knee, leaving Walker to face the reality of the condition. 

“I got hit in the face with some reality really fast,” Walker said in a 2023 interview. “The reality of the decision was that you either try to continue to play football with a knee that has failed an arthritis physical, or you try to do something different.” 

Soon after the physical, Walker was contacted by Hendrick Motorsports, the winningest team in NASCAR history. The team wanted Walker to attend its pit crew combine, something very similar to the workouts Walker participated in as a football player. 

That was 14 years ago. Walker officially joined the organization shortly after the combine and has remained with the organization as the fueler for William Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet. In the last several seasons, Walker has been part of numerous victories on the No. 24 team, including two consecutive Daytona 500 wins in 2024 and 2025. 

Jonathan “Tig” Willard on the field against North Carolina in 2011. (Provided by Parker Anderson)

Jonathan “Tig” Willard 

Like Walker, Willard went undrafted in the 2013 NFL Draft. However, Willard wound up signing with the Tennessee Titans that offseason and joined their practice squad. 

Willard did not appear in any games for the Titans throughout the 2013 season and did not return at season’s end. This left Willard in a position similar to the one Walker had been in a few years prior, contemplating what life would look like after professional football. 

In the years that followed, Willard found himself joining motorsports giant Chip Ganassi Racing ahead of the 2017 NASCAR season. Throughout his stint with the organization, Willard served as a jackman for numerous pit crews across the three major NASCAR national touring series.  

Prior to the start of the 2022 season, Chip Ganassi Racing’s NASCAR program was purchased by Trackhouse Racing, a brand-new NASCAR team. Fortunately for Willard, he was able to remain with the organization in the same role — a role that led to his being part of NASCAR history. 

In 2023, NASCAR took to a street circuit for the very first time in Chicago, and Trackhouse entered a special entry for three-time Australian Supercars champion Shane Van Gisbergen to take part in his first-ever NASCAR race. Willard was the jackman for Van Gisbergen, who went on to win the race — the first driver to do so in their first NASCAR Cup Series start since 1963.  

Landon Walker and team embrace driver William Byron after winning the 2024 Daytona 500. (Provided by Andy Roberts)

In the years since then, Willard has joined Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing in 2024 and is currently the jackman for Ryan Preece and the No. 60 Ford. Just last month, Willard was part of the pit crew for Preece’s first career victory that secured him a spot in the NASCAR Chase.  

A chance for a championship 

Both former Tigers now have an opportunity in front of them to accomplish something they have never done before: win a NASCAR championship. Their respective drivers, William Byron and Ryan Preece, both qualified for the NASCAR Chase — the sport’s version of a postseason — and have a chance over the last 10 races to secure the title. 

The Chase began on Labor Day weekend in the Palmetto State at Darlington Raceway, and continued this past Sunday at World Wide Technology Raceway in St. Louis. With just eight races remaining in the season, the two teams have their work cut out for them, as they both sit more than 100 points behind championship leader Denny Hamlin. 

While that gap might seem insurmountable, anything can happen, and both Walker and Willard will be working with their teams to put together strong performances to potentially cap off the season as NASCAR champions. Only time will tell if one of these former Tigers will be helping their teams hoist the Bill France Cup in just eight weeks’ time.  

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Collegiate Racing Series announces strategic partnership with IMSA 

Posted on by Kayla Rogers

By Nathan Inman

Just over a year removed from graduating, a Clemson alum is already making his mark on the world of motorsports.  

Jack Hobbs, ’25

On Aug. 27, the Collegiate Racing Series and the International Motor Sports Association announced the establishment of the National Advisory Board for Motorsports Education. Jack Hobbs, ‘25, is the founder of CRS, the official sanctioning body for collegiate motorsports that provides students with opportunities to gain racing experience on and off the track.  

In just its early stages, CRS already has more than 80 schools participating in the series. 

Through the partnership, NABME will “help ensure academic programs more closely reflect the skills, experiences and professional expectations required throughout today’s motorsports industry,” according to a release from IMSA. 

“That’s been a project we’ve been working on for 18 months,” Hobbs said after the announcement. “We’ve been working silently in the background, checking boxes, putting things in place to make sure that you know that announcement was not premature, and so we finally got to a point where all the boxes were checked.” 

Hobbs added that “it’s been great and it’s just really special to see the industry kind of come together and understand that education is supremely important to their success.” 

Before founding CRS, Hobbs co-established the Clemson Tiger Racing team. CTR currently races a repurposed Mazda Miata gifted to them by the Department of Automotive Engineering, a car that is now the base of CRS through a separate partnership with Mazda Motorsports.  

“There are several key people and entities that we would not be here without them, period, amen — Mazda is one of them,” Hobbs said. “They’ve given us unbelievable support in developing the car that our series uses. This is a ground-up car, CRS and Mazda really worked hand-in-hand with big names — Penske (and) OMP — to design a car that was both supremely affordable, but confidence-inspiring and safe.”  

Hobbs later elaborated on whether he could have ever imagined the partnership with IMSA coming together when he originally founded CTR. 

“What happened is not shocking to me, when it happened is,” Hobbs explained. “We firmly believe, and have believed, that college and motorsports needed to happen. And we firmly have always believed that the industry would welcome it, and they have.” 

Hobbs added that the timing of how all this came together shocked him the most, as did the level of interest the motorsports industry has shown in supporting the series.  

When discussing his time as a Clemson student, Hobbs explained how the University set him up to see this level of success. 

“Clemson does a really good job of preparing you for the unpreparable,” Hobbs said. “There isn’t a class in the world, there isn’t an opportunity in the world that can prepare you for things singularly. But the culmination of my Clemson experience, the petri dish that it is, to go out and work with Nathan (Chang) to create CTR, and to enjoy that experience… It’s the culmination of the four years that put me in a place mentally and leadership-wise just to be in a position to handle it all.” 

As CRS is experiencing rapid growth in such a short period of time, Hobbs was asked what his goals look like for 5-to-10 years down the road.  

“If we had to have our goal, we would just hope that the industry recognizes this platform as a legitimate funnel for talent development,” Hobbs said. “The goal is to develop better people. Something I learned very early on at CUICAR with the Deep Orange program is that the product is not the car — the product is always the student, and that’s something we’ve taken to heart with this program… This is for the students, and it always will be.” 

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Meet RHBSSI’s Fall 2026 student intern team

Posted on by kgerbas

With another school year underway, the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute is proud to introduce its team of seven student interns for the Fall semester. Including three returning students from previous semesters, this group will help advance the Institute’s mission while preparing for the third annual RECESS Symposium in November. We are excited to see all that this team will contribute!

Kaelyn Gannon
Communications Lead

Lucy Hart
Events Lead

Ava Ameres
Graphic Designer

Kaelyn Gannon joins RHBSSI as the Communications Lead, bringing experience in social media and public relations. Gannon is a fourth-year communication major from South Florida who also serves as a social media intern for Clemson University and a public relations intern with FerebeeLane in Greenville.

Returning for her third semester with the Institute, Lucy Hart will serve as the Events Lead. After graduating from Clemson in December 2025, Hart completed an internship with the Savannah Bananas before returning to Clemson to pursue a master’s degree in public administration. She enjoys spending time outdoors, running and being with her friends and family.

Senior Ava Ameres, a graphic communications major with a minor in brand communications, joins RHBSSI as the Graphic Designer. Ameres recently completed a graphic design internship with the MLB Players Association. Originally from New Jersey, she enjoys cheering on her favorite New York and New Jersey sports teams.

Nathan Inman
Motorsports Writer

Aubrey Tarbox
Sports Science Writer

Shanque Williams
Content Developer

Nathan Inman returns to the Institute as a Motorsports Writer for the second semester. A senior double majoring in sports communication and marketing, Inman has been involved with The Tiger since his first year and currently serves as the publication’s associate editor. He spent his summer completing an internship with The Seneca Journal.

Aubrey Tarbox combines her interests in sports and storytelling as RHBSSI’s Sports Science Writer. Tarbox is a junior communication major with a minor in brand communications and spent the summer interning with the San Antonio Missions, a Minor League Baseball affiliate of the San Diego Padres. She currently serves as a senior photographer for The Tiger and is part of the leadership team for Lutheran Campus Ministry.

Shanque Williams brings her experience as a track-and-field student-athlete to help RHBSSI create content this semester. A junior psychology major with a minor in business management, Williams represented Jamaica at the 2025 Pan American U23 Games and helped Clemson’s team win its second consecutive ACC Championship. She hopes to continue competing professionally while exploring a career in real estate.

Jordan Sowell
Software Developer


With a passion for programming and emerging technology, junior Jordan Sowell joins as a Software Developer. Jordan is studying computer science with a minor in artificial intelligence and recently built and launched a cloud-based Bible study app using Amazon Web Services. Outside of school and software development, Jordan enjoys cars, video games, and playing basketball.

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Beyond the Average: Brook Russell studies human performance at the extremes

Posted on by kgerbas

By Katie Gerbasich

Brook Russell, Ph.D., studies athletic performance beyond the average. As an associate professor in the Clemson University School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, he examines what happens at the far edges of a data set: human performance at the extremes.

Russell presented an invited talk in May at the American Statistical Association’s Virtual Sports Analytics Conference about two collaborative research projects examining speed and athleticism among NFL players.

The work grew from Russell’s collaboration with Paul Hogan, Clemson’s senior assistant football strength and conditioning coach. Russell conducted the quantitative analysis, while Hogan helped interpret the findings and place them in the context of football and human performance.

“It’s kind of a unique collaboration, to be honest,” Russell said. “There’s probably not a lot of football strength and conditioning coaches working on papers with people in the math department.”

The researchers use extreme value theory, a statistical framework traditionally applied in areas such as hydrology and finance to study rare events. Because elite NFL athletes are statistical outliers, this approach allows Russell and Hogan to examine performances at the far end of human ability and find characteristics that might be obscured when the data is viewed as a whole.

TJ Parker, former Clemson football player participates in the 40-yard dash during the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium on February 26, 2026 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Their first project, published in 2018 in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, examined relationships among NFL Combine event performances using both extreme-value and non-extremes-based approaches. The researchers explored how those different approaches could inform the evaluation of NFL prospects.

Their second project focused on differences between position groups, comparing cornerbacks and wide receivers across three NFL Combine events: the 40-yard dash, vertical jump and broad jump. The analysis suggested that wide receivers held a slight advantage in the 40-yard dash and vertical jump performances, while cornerbacks appeared to have a small edge in the broad jump.

In separate work, a graduate student examined how different Combine events relate to one another across typical and elite performers. The findings could help teams think differently about talent evaluation. If certain events provide overlapping information, teams may not need to rely on every available measurement when assessing a prospect.

Connecting statistical analysis to practical application is one of the central challenges of sports analytics.

“It’s easy to take in a lot of data and really interesting data sets and do interesting models,” Russell said. “But actually tying it back to some sort of decision-making process in practices or games can be a challenge.”

As sports analytics has grown, the field has drawn students and researchers from communication, marketing, economics and other disciplines. That interdisciplinary environment mirrors Russell’s work, which extends beyond athletic performance to the relationship between sports and business.

In a separate collaborative project with Angeline Scheinbaum, Ph.D., Dan Duncan Professor of Sports Marketing at Clemson, Russell supported a graduate student studying how fans’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility influence their willingness to use a company’s products or services. The researchers are preparing the project for publication.

Whether he is studying a 40-yard dash or the relationship between corporations and their communities, Russell uses data to better understand human performance and sports business.

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From Clemson to the World Tour: Sports management alumna takes on Savannah Bananas

Posted on by kgerbas
Lucy Hart joined the Savannah Bananas World Tour following her graduation.

From dancing players to sold-out stadiums and nonstop entertainment, the Savannah Bananas World Tour has become known for creating unforgettable fan experiences. Behind the spectacle is a dedicated team of staff members and hundreds of Gameday Teammates who make every game possible.

Following her graduation from Clemson University’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management in December 2025, Lucy Hart joined that team as a People Operations Intern, helping recruit and lead Gameday Teammates at stops across the World Tour.

Fans First Entertainment, the organization behind the Savannah Bananas, is known for prioritizing culture just as much as talent. The extensive interview process, which included multiple rounds of interviews and numerous pre-hiring projects, reflects that commitment.  

“They put a ton of effort into making sure the people they hire fit their culture and will serve fans well,” Hart said. 

Before joining the Bananas, Hart served as Destination Experiences Intern with VisitGreenvilleSC, where she recruited and managed volunteers for the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament. That experience sparked her interest in pursuing the people operations role with the Bananas.

During the World Tour, Hart led the Bananas’ Gameday Teammates, local volunteers who assist with ticketing and merchandise, while helping create a welcoming experience for fans in each city.

Lucy Hart stands in front of a group of Gameday teammates to give them directions.

“I love the nature of these two pretty unique roles,” Hart said. “There aren’t a lot of other jobs out there where you get to work with an entirely new set of people every day with the shared purpose of serving others throughout the day.”

People Operations Interns are among the first to arrive at each stadium. While other staff prepare the venue for fans, Hart’s team prepares it for the Gameday Teammates by setting up check-in, organizing credentials and name tags, distributing shirts and ensuring volunteers have everything they need before gates open.

“Our Gameday Teammates work with other Banana Ball staff, and while this may be their first day working with us, our crew has been grinding every weekend in a new city,” Hart said. “I like to make sure we are also supporting our Stand Leads and Ticket Road Warriors. If they are feeling supported and optimistic, then that energy will trickle down to the teammates.” 

That emphasis on supporting one another begins long before game day. According to Hart, the organization dedicates significant time to teaching its core values and ensuring every employee understands the mission.

“If everyone is making decisions throughout the day guided by the same principles, then ideally, we will all be working towards the same shared vision of putting the fans first and entertaining always,” Hart said. 

Hart encourages students hoping to work in sports to be intentional with every opportunity.

From working as a camp counselor to internships with VisitGreenvilleSC, the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute and the Savannah Bananas, Hart credits each role with preparing her for the next step in her career.

“Every experience that I have had has led me to the next step and then the next,” Hart said. “Trust the process and spend time truly thinking about what you love and what you are good at. The rest will come in time.” 

This fall, Hart will return to Clemson to pursue a Master of Public Administration while continuing to serve as Events Lead with the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute, bringing the lessons she learned on the road back to campus.

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