An early morning photo of the pasture outside of Clemson’s Equine Center from the Center’s website
Leona Ransdell
RHBSSI staff fellow, Leona Ransdell, leads 4-H Equine programming for youth at Clemson University. The South Carolina 4-H Program is participating in and hosting a number of events this summer for equestrians, young and old, from the Special Olympics Equestrian State Show to STEM workshops and more.
Ransdell and the South Carolina 4-H Equine Program work in close partnership with the Clemson University Equine Center. The goal of the Clemson University Equine Center is to be a student-centered, self-sustaining enterprise that serves as a leader in the South Carolina horse industry. The Center caters to the needs of students through various means including:
Animal and Veterinary Science classes and labs
The Clemson Equine-Assisted Therapy (CLEAT) Program
Two IHSA equestrian teams
Student employment
Graduate research opportunities
Boarding
2024 South Carolina 4-H Horse Program Southern Regional Delegation
They also take seriously their responsibility to our community. Current outreach programs include:
Summer riding camps for high school students
Educational seminars and other continued learning opportunities
Applied research on industry-relevant topics
Private sales of young horses
The South Carolina 4-H Program and the Clemson University Equine Center will be hosting and working with the following events this summer:
Special Olympics State Equestrian Show (May 30-June 1)
Hosted at Clemson’s T. Ed Garrison Arena, the Special Olympics State Equestrian Show begins with an Opening Ceremony at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 30 and ends with the Equestrian Competition at 1 p.m. on Sunday, June 1. The weekend also includes a western hoedown, pole bending and barrel competition, trail competition, stall decorating contest and more.
Click here to learn more about the Special Olympics State Equestrian Show for South Carolina.
State 4-H Horse Show (June 10-14)
Hosted by the Clemson University College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences’ Cooperative Extension program, the State 4-H Horse Show incorporates indoor and outdoor activities for all levels, rookie to senior. The event features a Parade of Counties and Opening Ceremony on Wednesday, June 11 roughly 30 minutes after the morning events.
Click here to preview the tentative schedule for the State 4-H Horse Show.
State 4-H Congress (July 8-11)
A photo from the 2024 State 4-H Congress
Hosted by the South Carolina 4-H Youth Development Program, qualified 4-H members (see website), aged 14-18 are invited to attend this year’s State 4-H Congress on Clemson University campus. The event is themed, “Beyond Our Time.” Join 4-H members from across the state as you represent your county at State 4-H Congress.
Youth will stay in the dorms, visit campus facilities and see the amazing work being done at Clemson. State 4-H Congress will celebrate the accomplishments and talents of our senior 4-H members, elect next year’s State 4-H Teen Council and provide a platform to engage in the head, heart, hands and health of 4-H through service, learning, connection and more.
Click here to learn more about the State 4-H Congress.
STEM Fest (July 19)
STEM Fest is a three-hour, community-based celebration of science, technology, engineering and math for up to 1,000 students and parents. Attendees participate in 50 hands-on stations, perform experiments, watch demonstrations and meet professionals from all different career backgrounds. Each station is manned by collegiate and professional volunteers. The upcoming event on July 19 will take place in Greenville, SC.
According to Leona, people interested in 4-H and Equine activities locally to them can reach out to their local county offices and most, if not all, offer multiple summer camps.
“For example, Newberry County has engineering camp in June, Crafty clover camp in July, Farm tour camp in July, general 4-H camp in July!” she said. “Pickens County has a Butterfly Habitat Workshop May 31 Horseless Horse Camp June 16!”
Ransdell ’12, is a Clemson Animal Science graduate passionate about horses, her community and education. She returned to Clemson in 2024 to take on her current role, which combines all of her passions into one.
“Everything we do at South Carolina 4-H and the Clemson University Equine Center is near and dear to my heart and I hope you will find one or more event this season that interests you!” said Ransdell.
For more information on youth programming at the Equine Center, contact Leona Ransdell at leona@clemson.edu. Click here to follow the Center on Facebook and click here to follow the South Carolina 4-H Livestock and Equine Program!
The team played and defeated the CP Soccer All Stars 6-1 at Historic Riggs Field at their first real match in program history.
Goalkeeper Max Alberici celebrates a goal with midfielder Chile Chitulangoma, who scored.
While the players lifted a trophy for the win, they weren’t just thrilled with the hardware: they were ecstatic that they even had the opportunity to play.
Shea Hammond is a graduate student in communication who has been with the team for several years, the first undergraduate player in the program’s history. Seeing the event come together was enough to inspire a win.
“It’s the name of the field. It’s historic,” Hammond said after the game. “To finally play on this field, it’s historic. It’s indescribable.”
Head coach and assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, Felipe Tobar, watched his players’ dreams come true that afternoon. Many of them had dreamed of playing collegiate sports after high school, a period where many athletes with cerebral palsy (CP) stop playing.
“We’d like to say thank you to the community and the fanbase who supported us,” Tobar said. “They had a dream to play in a college stadium and they accomplished it.”
Graduate student Shea Hammond scored a hat-trick on Saturday morning.
Four different Clemson players scored, while Hammond scored a hat-trick with all three of his goals coming in the second half. One player, Tyler Bennett, is a team alumnus and one of the first two players to join the program in 2017. Bennett brought practices featuring movements, passing and other workouts from the U.S. CP National Team.
It was a new Clemson experience for Bennett, coming back to campus and playing in a full game of soccer with CP rules.
“I think it went well for the program,” Bennett said. “They showed that if you’re training here full-time, you’re going to do pretty well.”
Many faces from the Clemson Men’s and Women’s Soccer teams were present. Flags flew and celebrations commenced in the stands whenever a player scored. The entire women’s lacrosse team attended, surprising goalkeeper Max Alberici, the team’s manager.
That wasn’t the best moment of the game in Alberici’s opinion, however. His favorite experience came from watching substitute goalkeeper, Ethan Donahue, play. He joined the team several weeks before the match after Hammond recruited him on campus. Donahue and his disability were welcomed by the team in open arms.
“I was more happy to get him in the game,” Alberici said.
“There’s no relationship like an adaptive sport relationship,” Hammond said, “and like a CP soccer family.”
The match was the last that this team will play all together, as they say goodbye to Hammond following five seasons with the program. As he graduates from Clemson, Hammond looks forward to working with cerebral palsy and Paralympic athletes in the future.
The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute sponsored the match’s trophy, which the Clemson CP team raised following its win.
“That’s a lifetime of work that I’m going to commit to and making sure that we can grow this program in this sport as much as possible,” Hammond said.
For Tobar, the practices and cultivation of this match proved to be a great success. Earlier in the week, the team played Daniel High School in a scrimmage to prepare for the game. Now, Tobar and his team are “blessed and honored” to have the opportunity to represent Clemson.
“That’s the only official game that we will play as a team,” Tobar said. “I could not be more proud.”
Click here to check out more photos from the match.
The Clemson Paralympic Soccer team gathers outside the Clemson Soccer practice facility in their new uniforms to prepare for the historic match on April 19. (Photo by Natalie Bell)
Clemson professor of sport and recreation management in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management (PRTM), Skye Arthur-Banning, was at the London Paralympic Games in 2012 with a group of students when an idea came to him.
Five years later, that idea would form Clemson Paralympic Soccer, the only collegiate program of its kind in the nation. Now, on April 19 at 11 a.m., the team will be playing their first-ever match in front of a crowd at Historic Riggs Field.
Several Clemson Paralympic Soccer players receive national team call-ups by the U.S. Men’s CP National Team, where they play around the country and even across the globe.
History of Clemson Paralympic Soccer
Arthur-Banning was a soccer referee in 2012 working various professional leagues and U.S. Open cup games. Following the 2012 Paralympic Games, he decided to devote his time to Para soccer, seeing the high performance of blind and cerebral palsy (CP) soccer players during that time.
“Instantly, I knew that was my next step,” he said. “There’s my next opportunity to continue refereeing, but also begin to support those with disabilities in sport environments.
Clemson Paralympic Soccer Head Coach, Felipe Tobar (Photo by Natalie Bell)
Felipe Tobar, assistant professor in the PRTM department, is head coach of the team. Arthur-Banning took notice of Tobar in 2021 while he was assistant coach for Daniel High School’s varsity soccer team.
“They needed a coach, so they needed structured training sessions,” Tobar recalled. “Since I was doing that at Daniel, he invited me to join the program as a head coach. I immediately said yes.”
Strength through adversity
The team is gearing up for its first-ever match on April 19 at Historic Riggs Field at 11 a.m. They practice three times a week to prepare.(Photo by Natalie Bell)
Strength through adversity is the team’s motto. Tobar encourages the team to play and live by this every day.
Currently, the team is made up of six players who have cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that can affect movement and posture. They also welcome players who have suffered a stroke or any severe brain injury.
Tobar has a connection with brain injury through his mother who had a stroke in 2011. He took care of her for eight years in Brazil before moving to the U.S. to earn his Ph.D. in parks, recreation and tourism management at Clemson.
“I saw what a stroke can do to a person, and I empathize with the players,” he said. “I had this background with my mom in which you can’t treat them as victims, you have to really see them as equals.”
Tobar pushes his players with drills and feedback three mornings a week.
“We keep the sessions intense and I don’t treat them differently,” he said.
Goalkeeper Max Alberici is the team’s starter, who saw an opportunity to play sports at the collegiate level and joined Clemson Paralympic Soccer.(Photo by Natalie Bell)
The players expend three times the amount of energy on the field as able-bodied soccer players due to quicker muscle fatigue – therefore, their recovery process takes longer.
For goalkeeper Max Alberici, who has spastic diplegia which affects more than one limb, he burns almost four times more energy than the average player. Alberici is a senior sports communication major who grew up playing lacrosse but saw this as an opportunity to continue playing sports in college, which was his dream.
“I hadn’t played organized soccer since eighth grade and I just go ‘okay, I’m doing this,’” Alberici said when he first heard about the program.
Now as the team’s starting goalkeeper, he embraces the training sessions and their intensity.
“There is definitely an intensity that I do enjoy and I had to learn to enjoy,” Alberici said. “But I think overall, I think having a game to work towards is going to make this a lot easier, mentally, for me.”
Because this program at Clemson is unique, four of the team’s six players are also part of the player pool for the U.S. Men’s Cerebral Palsy National Team, where they are regularly picked to play.
Chile Chitulangoma is a defensive midfielder that has been with the team for three years, becoming a regularly called-up player on the U.S. Men’s CP National Team. (Photo by Natalie Bell)
Midfielder Chile Chitulangoma, a junior mechanical engineering major, is one of those players who joined in the fall of 2022. He is hemiplegic on the left side of his body affecting his strength and coordination, but takes advantage of playing quickly to overcome these obstacles. He describes the practices as tactical.
“A lot has to do with technical ability being refined with your technique on the ball,” Chitulangoma said. “So, a lot of the work we do has to do with a lot of different passing patterns and precise movements.”
In the beginning years of the program, the team would practice at local recreational fields like Nettles Park and the Snow Family Outdoor Fitness and Wellness Complex. Since 2024, the team practices at Clemson Soccer’s men’s and women’s practice facilities with help from Clemson Athletics.
“Athletics has given a lot of support to us,” Tobar said. “That elevated the level of our training sessions.”
As the only U.S. school with this type of program, Clemson allots eight scholarships that allow out-of-state players to pay in-state tuition — the only university in the world that does so for CP soccer.
The match
Tobar describes the upcoming match as a debut for everyone — the first time Clemson Paralympic Soccer will play against other Paralympic soccer players from across the country for a trophy.
“We hope this game will bring attention to our program and the University this week,” Tobar said.
Players who have recently been admitted to play for the Tigers next season will also be on this all-star team of contenders. The captain of the U.S. Men’s Cerebral Palsy National Team, Josh Burnais, will be coaching the opposing team.
CP soccer rules are slightly different from traditional soccer rules. The game will be played in two halves, each 30 minutes long. Compared to soccer’s standard 11-on-11 format, CP soccer is played 7-on-7 with field dimensions and goal sizes a little smaller.
Clemson Paralympic Soccer Team practicing for the upcoming match (Photo by Natalie Bell)
Throw-ins can change to simply rolling the ball in underhand. If the ball unintentionally hits the CP-impacted hand in a natural position, there is no handball offense. These changes were made based on how the body functions for a CP player.
The event on April 19 will also be open to children with disabilities in the Upstate to have a one-hour clinic with the team from 9 to 10 a.m. to meet and play together. During the starting lineups, they will enter the field with the players.
“We want them to see their future on the pitch, so they can reflect and see that although there are barriers that they are going to face, it’s still possible to strive and succeed,” Tobar said.
For many of the players, it is a dream come true. Alberici grew up wanting to play in a stadium, and now his dream is becoming a reality.
“My main goal was always to be a college athlete,” Alberici said. “The soccer piece was much later than almost every single one of my teammates, but I’d never thought I’d play college sports in a college stadium.”
Meanwhile, for players like Chitulangoma, educating the public about overcoming adversity is what is most exciting.
“I think it’s a very unique opportunity to [educate about my disability] with a game of soccer,” Chitulangoma said. “I don’t think there’s a better way we could show our game and our disability to the community.”
Clemson Athletics is supporting the event. The day will see several Clemson Men’s and Women’s Soccer players making an appearance, with some taking part in halftime promotions.
Tobar also plans to auction signed soccer balls and other items to fundraise for the team.
That same weekend, Clemson Adaptive Sports and Recreation will be hosting the Palmetto Games, a regional adaptive sport event featuring track and field, swimming and air rifle competitions.
“We want to have as many people as possible,” Tobar said. “There are no other sports that are going to be playing that morning, so it’s a full day of Para sports.”
With kickoff set for 11 a.m. on April 19, Arthur-Banning, Tobar and the team are ready for their first organized CP game in program history, hoping to spread more awareness about Para sports and the work that the players have put in.
“I think this game provides that opportunity for them to showcase all the hard work that they’ve put in, all the skill and talent that they have and, hopefully, be able to do that in front of not only their Clemson peers, but their community at large,” Arthur-Banning said.
“This gives them that opportunity to show that off a little bit and feel like this is their payback, if you will. This is their moment.”
Arthur-Banning and Tobar are faculty fellows of the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute at Clemson, sponsor of the trophy for the historic Paralympic soccer match.
SunWoo Park, Clemson Ph.D. candidate, presents her research on the college football sport experience at a CSRI poster session
Clemson University’s Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute (RHBSSI) recently showcased at the College Sport Research Institute’s (CSRI) annual conference on college sport held March 19-21 in Columbia, South Carolina.
CSRI’s mission is to encourage and support interdisciplinary and inter-university college sport research, serve as the research consortium for college sport researchers from across the United States, and disseminate college sport research results to academics, college practitioners, and the general public.
As a premiere sponsor of the event, RHBSSI contributed to the success of the conference and engaged in meaningful discussions with scholars, practitioners and industry leaders studying college sport. Several RHBSSI faculty fellows and Clemson students attended, gaining valuable insights and sharing their cutting-edge research and innovation in sport. This gathering highlighted the Institute’s commitment to advancing research, education and collaboration on issues in intercollegiate athletics.
Clemson expertise on college sport
Faculty and Ph.D. students from the following Clemson departments attended the conference on behalf of RHBSSI and presented their research on college sport.
Chris Corr, Clemson University / Robert Hoffman, The Pennsylvania State University Abington / Richard M. Southall, University of South Carolina / Christopher Atwater, Troy University
Sarah Stokowski, Clemson University / Alex E. Chisholm, Clemson University / Andrew Rudd, Franklin Pierce University / Michael Godfrey, Clemson University
“‘Thank you to the Institute for supporting me to attend CSRI,” said Sarah Stokowski, associate professor of athletic leadership in the Clemson University Department of Education and Organizational Leadership Development. “I had the best time! It was also nice to see so many of my Clemson colleagues in attendance.”
Sponsorship impact
RHBSSI Assistant Director, Kayla Rogers, at the sponsorship table
“The CSRI conference provided an engaging venue to meet experts from across the country leading the academic study of college sport,” said John DesJardins, interim director of RHBSSI. “Our faculty fellows from Clemson’s College of Education have a rich history of attending, presenting at, and leading the conference, and we were honored to be involved this year and support several faculty and students to attend and present.”
RHBSSI set up a table at the event, providing an established space to meet attendees and talk about potential cross-over.
“Partnering with CSRI was the perfect opportunity to support Clemson faculty in the field and facilitate more cross-collaboration – between our faculty and those at other universities studying intercollegiate athletics,” said Kayla Rogers, assistant director of RHBSSI.
“Brooks helped make the conference be the best that it could be and I’m beyond appreciative and grateful,” said Chris Corr, executive director of CSRI and senior lecturer at Clemson University.
On February 21, Clemson University held an engaging event for Tigers of all backgrounds to join the launch of the University’s new capital campaign, Fiercely Forward, the driving force to achieve the bold initiatives of the University’s strategic plan, Clemson Elevate.
Partners of the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute showcased their sports science technologies, research and creative endeavors in a fun-filled display of helmet-hitting, off-road vehicle exploring and exoskeleton viewing.
Bioengineers, packaging scientists, and automotive and industrial engineers from the Institute’s fellows cohort participated in the event, engaging with guests and explaining how their lines of inquiry and new innovations are making an impact in the greater Clemson community and across the globe.
For the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute, this campaign is a launching ground for new initiatives in support of the University’s strategic plan, positioning RHBSSI to become a national leader in sports science and equipping students with the skills, experiences and connections to thrive in a dynamic industry of sports enthusiasts of all backgrounds.
John DesJardins, Ph.D., on Oct. 18 at the Launchpad
The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute (RHBSSI) recently sponsored the Brook T. Smith Launchpad’s first annual Sports Entrepreneurship Symposium on October 18 in downtown Clemson. Interim Director, John Desjardins, participated by speaking on sports science and sports education at Clemson University.
Clemson offers more than 55 courses in sport, spanning colleges and disciplines – everything from the history of sports in the modern world in the Department of History and Geography, to kinesiology in the Department of Biological Sciences. Overall, more than 15 departments participate in sports education at Clemson, spanning 7 colleges.
“It was a pleasure to sponsor and participate in the Brook T. Smith Launchpad’s first-annual Sports Entrepreneurship Symposium. The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute exists at Clemson to work as a platform for the multidisciplinary study of sport. It is great to see so many Clemson alumni going on to work in the sports field – and then return to share their knowledge and experience with Clemson students!”
John DesJardins, Ph.D., interim director of the Institute
The Sports Entrepreneurship Symposium consisted of multiple panel discussions with professional speakers from numerous sports disciplines. Topics ranged from AI’s impact on data analysis to new business opportunities through NIL. Attendees were encouraged to explore opportunities in the sports entrepreneurial ecosystem and learn skills to accelerate their careers.
Click here to learn more about the Brook T. Smith Launchpad, Clemson’s entrepreneurial hub. Click here for a list of courses at Clemson that delve into sport.
