Author: 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.

“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.

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. 

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.

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.

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 

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 

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.  

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.  

By Nathan Inman

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

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.” 

For the second year in a row, Clemson Paralympic Soccer went head-to-head in an official match against the CP (Cerebral Palsy) Soccer All-Stars at Clemson University’s Historic Riggs Field on Saturday, April 25, 2026. This event marks the second time in U.S. college history that two Cerebral Palsy soccer teams have competed against each other in a university stadium.

The match was close, with the score tied 1-1 for most of the game. But in the end, the Clemson team scored an additional goal in the second half to secure a victory.

Check out this instant replay of the game-winning goal, captured by Drew Landon Media, by Player of the Match, Shae Hammond.

Post-event surveys showed that, at the start, around 43% of attendees were unaware of the sport and, by the end of the match, over 60% of attendees’ perceptions of Paralympic athletes had positively changed. 88% of fans expressed an interest in supporting adaptive sports in the future.

“Clemson University is inarguably a trailblazer in the world of adaptive soccer,” head coach and faculty fellow of the Institute, Felipe Tobar, said.

The team at the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute (RHBSSI) thanks Clemson Paralympic Soccer for involving the Institute in its activities as a sponsor.

“So much positive energy and goodwill,” RHBSSI Director John DesJardins said. “I’m so happy for the program, faculty, staff and students that it supports.”

To learn more about Clemson Paralympic Soccer within the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson, click here.

Photos provided by Carol San Martin

By Nathan Inman

As the semester is entering the home stretch, so too is the newest vehicle build for Clemson Baja SAE. After months of designing, the vehicle is now in its final stages of the build phase as the team prepares to compete in a competition in New York this June.

The RHBSSI sat down with Nicholas Roessler, a freshman automotive engineering major and the team’s chassis lead and head welder, to discuss how the build has progressed over the semester.

“The new build’s coming along well,” he said. “We’re kind of in the final steps of welding together our chassis. Suspension is finally getting finalized, so we can start making the suspension and figuring out where it goes on the car.”

As the chassis lead, Roessler is responsible for ensuring the chassis meets the standards required for the vehicle to handle the rough terrain it will encounter in competition. If one thing went wrong with the chassis, it could derail the entire build.

With that in mind, Roessler said he understands the important responsibility placed upon him and is confident that the chassis will be able to handle whatever is thrown its way.

“Driver safety is the most important thing to us, 100%,” he said. “As I’m getting there, and as I’m designing the chassis, that’s the main thought. We really can’t chance having something break, and so structural integrity is definitely the most important thing.”

Roessler mentioned that throughout the semester, one particular challenge with the chassis has been making it entirely in-house. The team has primarily focused on not outsourcing any development and on making the vehicle entirely student-built.

“There’s a learning curve to kind of bending our own tubes, and there’s been a lot of mistakes actually putting the chassis together, but we’ve kind of got it figured out and on a roll,” he said.

When Clemson Baja last spoke with the RHBSSI, the team focused on a brand-new test track under construction for them to test their newest build right here in Clemson. Roessler says the track will help the team ensure all the pieces are in place for the build to hold together before they compete in June.

“It’ll probably be one of the most beneficial things that has happened for Baja in a long time, he said. “We’ll be able to actually test our vehicle, and that way, if anything fails, hopefully it fails with the shop five minutes away, and not in Rochester, New York.

As the build nears completion, the team has its sights set on June 11 for its first competition in Rochester with the new vehicle.

This semester, RHBSSI is working with two track-and-field student-athlete interns through the UPIC Beyond the Game program. In recognition of National Athletic Trainer Month, we’re highlighting the people who support them behind the scenes. We spoke with their athletic trainers about what it’s like to keep athletes healthy and performing throughout the season.

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