Division 1 student-athletes already battle the complexities of balancing classes with practices and a social life. When medical conditions emerge, the situation is elevated to a new level. Using funding from the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute (RHBSSI), Department of Communication faculty and RHBSSI fellows, Brandon Boatwright, Ph.D., and Rikishi Simith-Rey, Ph.D., are conducting an exploratory study, hoping to illuminate student-athletes’ challenges as they compete at a high level while managing chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases.
Brandon Boatwright, Ph.D.
His own journey with an autoimmune disease inspired Boatwright. After a conversation with former Division Ⅰ athlete, Smith-Rey, the idea for the study was born. The two are now working with students Marissa Bennett and Ava Quallen, from the Departments of Communication and Health Science, respectively, to find ways to assist these athletes.
“Life as a student-athlete is complicated and complex already, but to feel like you’re fighting against your own body in the context of being a college student and trying to navigate your schedule builds the stresses of all that,” Boatwright said.
A key point in the research has been identifying what resources are available for these individuals. There is a fluctuation in availability among Division Ⅰ programs, and an even greater disparity when comparing Division Ⅰ to Division Ⅱ.
“When we think about resources here at Clemson, student-athletes have some of the best stuff, but not everyone goes to Clemson,” Smith-Rey said. “Not everyone, even if you are D1, has the same resources, so how can we identify what resources student athletes need? What ways can we assist them in communicating their needs to other stakeholders in their lives?”
Rikishi Simith-Rey, Ph.D.
The study is currently in the data collection process. The team has spoken with different student-athletes across various sports with Type 1 Diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn’s disease, among other illnesses.
“The folks we have spoken with have been incredible people and athletes competing at such a super high level,” Boatwright said. “They are just incredible people for having to deal with the things that they have dealt with and still preserving.”
Smith-Rey commends these interviews for being a space where these student-athletes feel seen. Often, chronic illnesses or autoimmune diseases have an element of invisibility that makes communication a challenge.
After speaking with the team, these athletes feel like someone understands their unique story. Boatwright shared a narrative about an athlete with Rheumatoid Arthritis.
“They would just have to wake up and tell players, teammates, coaches or someone that it’s not gonna happen because I can’t get out of bed,” Boatwright said. “‘I physically just can not sit up enough to get out of bed. It’s just one of those days.’”
Athletic programs and teams can become better advocates by better understanding the challenges these athletes face due to their medical conditions.
“We can be that support button right now,” Smith-Rey said. “Someone is speaking up for you and looking for ways to assist you in this.”
If you are or were an athlete who competed at the Division Ⅰ to Division Ⅱ level, are no more than five years removed from your sport, and were diagnosed with a chronic illness or autoimmune disease before competing in college, click here to set up an interview.
Natalie Bell was a former Graphic Design intern with the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute. After graduating from Clemson in the spring of 2025, she is now a Graphic Designer at FerebeeLane, an advertising agency in Greenville, South Carolina.
What does a job as a Graphic Designer look like?
I do a little bit of everything! I work with my fellow designers and the account team to strategically design anything from print ads to billboards to product labels to websites- and everything in between for our clients.
How have you taken what you have learned with the Institute into what you’re doing now?
Juggling multiple design projects and ideating unique opportunities to spread brand awareness with my fellow interns at the Institute gave me a great foundation for working alongside my colleagues now!
What are your future plans looking like?
I am currently working on learning more in my field and becoming a stronger graphic designer and teammate.
What advice would you give to current students regarding the Institute?
This goes for any opportunity- but working with the Institute is what you make of it! I immersed myself with Institute projects and loved expanding my knowledge about sports science, so I felt like my senior year with the Institute was incredibly rewarding. I got to photograph the Clemson Men’s First Paralympic match game on Riggs Field, score Horse log books, and design signs and golf scorecards for RECESS. So dive in, and be ready for some great opportunities and new learnings.
Christopher Pearce graduated from Clemson in 2024 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. He received the Markvan Bellamy Brooks Endowed Scholarship in 2024. During his time at Clemson, he worked at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) as a Research Assistant and was an IT Intern at the Watt Family Innovation Center.
How have you utilized your major/concentration in sports to help your career?
I have used my degree to grow my background in the automotive industry both directly and indirectly. While my internships provided me with the opportunity to apply my engineering skills directly, my current role is more focused on managing projects in the engineering realm. Group projects at Clemson and prior industry knowledge helped prepare me for this type of role.
What is your current role, where, and what do you do?
I am currently a project manager at Porsche Cars North America, supporting their engineering and quality teams. I am also responsible for managing the technical review of various escalated field cases.
What was your journey like since graduating from Clemson?
Since graduating from Clemson, I have moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where I continued my internship with Porsche and was soon hired into my current role.
What advice would you give to future Brooks scholars as they approach post-grad?
My advice to all students is to build relationships everywhere you go. These relationships will help you grow and navigate through your industry.
The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute is thrilled to welcome several new Clemson faculty members to its cohort of Faculty Fellows.
SUSAN LIMBER, Ph.D., MLS
Dan Olweus Professor, Department of Psychology
Dr. Limber is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychology. Prior to her retirement in 2025, she was named the Dan Olweus Professor, highlighting her significant contributions to furthering the work of the late Dan Olweus, a pioneer in bullying prevention work. Dr. Limber is a developmental psychologist who also holds a Master’s of Legal Studies. Her nearly 25 years of research focus on psychological and legal issues related to bullying among children, as well as youth civic engagement, and children’s rights. She co-authored the book, Cyberbullying: Bullying in the Digital Age, in 2008. Awarded by the American Psychological Association (APA), she is a recipient of the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest. Before coming to Clemson, Dr. Limber was the Associate Director at the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina. She also provided consultation to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on bullying prevention efforts from 2001-2016. Now, she serves as the Graduate Program Director for a PhD in International Family & Community Studies.
KATHRYN KISSKA-SCHULZE, JD, LL.M.
Associate Professor, School of Accountancy
Kisska-Schulze is the Elliott Davis Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Powers College of Business, School of Accountancy. She launched the School of Accountancy’s first Sports Law course in 2024. Her research focuses on the amateur and collegiate sports arena, with particular emphasis given to various tax consequences that could impact the amateur sports industry as it continues to evolve. Kisska-Schulze has published 13 sports-related research articles to date, including one titled “Brute Force (Anti) Federalism,” which won the Holmes-Cardozo Award in 2022. This premier research award is granted by the Academy of Legal Studies in Business. She has been invited to present her research or speak on sports law issues at Oklahoma Law School, UC Irvine Law, and various other schools across the country. Previously, she served for three years as Chair of the Sports and Entertainment Law Section of the internationally recognized Academy of Legal Studies in Business. Additionally, Kisska-Schulze now sits on Clemson’s Faculty Athletic Council.
ETHAN KUNG, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering
Kung is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering. His interdisciplinary research on aspects of cardiovascular biomechanics intersects with athletic performance and human physiology. Kung was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop an experimental-computational hybrid modeling framework of the cardiovascular system. This framework can be applied to better understand the complex relationship between exercise and body mechanics. His research has gained supportive funding from the American Heart Association, the Children’s Heart Foundation, and Saving Tiny Hearts Society. Additionally, he is an associate editor for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Journal of Biomechanical Engineering and serves on the Executive Committee of the ASME’s Bioengineering Division.
ALEX CHISHOLM, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning
Chisholm is as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning. He brings over fifteen years of experience teaching various social sciences in K-12, as well as mentorship experience at the University of Georgia. Chisholm’s research primarily focuses on black social studies, race in education, and civic education. His work explores the relationship between sports and societal development. A top journal in his field, The Social Studies Journal, recently published his article titled “Beyond the Standard: Teaching Civic Engagement Through Black Athlete Activism and Resistance.” At Clemson, Chisholm is also the Secondary Social Studies Student-Teaching Coordinator.
Clemson faculty and staff making contributions to the sports field, broadly defined, are invited to apply to become members of the Institute. Fellows meet twice annually, collaborate on multi-disciplinary projects and are eligible to receive additional funding from RHBSSI for their work. Click here to view the full list of fellows and click here to learn more about becoming a Brooks Fellow.
Throughout the 2025 summer, Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, Dr. Felipe Tobar, has been conducting sport research around the world. From Clemson to Germany, Australia and Taiwan, Tobar has taken his passion for soccer and research on the intersection of sport, tourism, history, events, politics, and technology across the world.
Holocaust remembrance connected to German soccer culture
Tobar with members of the Alle zusammen – voran 03! initiative
In early May, Tobar took a group of students from Clemson to Germany to study “the Culture of Remembrance and Political Activism in German Football.” The first stop was Berlin, where they toured the city and its remembrance sites to help students understand that the impact of the Holocaust was not solely confined to concentration camps, but weaved into daily life, including soccer. They also attended the Babelsberg 03 vs. FC Carl Zeiss Jena match and witnessed the “Alle zusammen – voran 03!” initiative (“All Together – Leading 03!”), which is a campaign working to eliminate barriers in the stadium and in the way people think about inclusion in soccer between players with and without disabilities.
The next stop was Bremen, where the group walked around the city learning about the systematic use of forced labor under the Nazi regime and how the local community was fully aware of all crimes, and how political engagement in soccer is a necessity. After the walking tour, they visited Bunker Valentin, which was a Nazi-era submarine bunker, where they reflected on how to understand the victims in the eyes of soccer to present them as fans who never got to support their club again. They also got to tour Werder Bremen and retrace the Nazi-era history. After that tour, they got to witness the Werder Bremen vs RB Leipzig game and interact with locals.
Tobar and hisstudy abroad group at FC St. Pauli
After Bremen, they visited Hamburg, Dortmund, and Cologne, where they visited the FC St. Pauli Museum, HSV Museum, Borussia Dortmund, and the FC Köln Stadium. Not only did they get to experience German culture through soccer matches and stadium and museum tours, but they also gained a deeper understanding of how players, directors, and fans were important in helping build a culture of remembrance.
“Football clubs have the power, and the social responsibility, to remember, speak out, and act.” – Dr. Felipe Tobar
Their last stop was in Munich, where they played street soccer with locals and learned how the game of soccer at any level can teach important values that immigrant youth can take with them throughout their lives and help them adapt to new communities. The group then visited the FC Bayern Museum and reflected on how Bayern players and directors were affected by Nazi ideologies and how Munich played a central role in Hitler’s rise. The students also presented social media campaigns they had created focusing on topics such as racism, religious intolerance, and intersectionality in soccer.
During and after the trip, Tobar initiated two different studies. The first is about stickers. He noticed that around the soccer stadiums, there were stickers everywhere. These can easily be overlooked, but when he looked at these, he saw a version of fan expression, fans communicating their social and political beliefs and how German soccer culture is a vehicle of political activism. The second is a study focused on the benefits of teaching Holocaust history and how German soccer clubs can collaborate with remembrance centers and former concentration camps to attract new audiences and use soccer’s influence to communicate Holocaust history and ensure that it never happens again.
Presentations abroad
Tobar and colleague presenting research at the National Taichung University of Education
Tobar was invited as a visiting researcher and teacher to the National Taichung University of Education in Taiwan, where he had the opportunity to speak at three different undergraduate courses. He shared his experiences working with Paralympic soccer athletes and the importance of respect. He also presented his teaching philosophy, which is one where it is important to promote kindness and learning to create more engaged and curious students.
In Australia, he presented at the 16th International Conference on Sport and Society at Monash University in Melbourne. He presented his paper about English soccer stadiums, specifically Liverpool FC and how the presence of tourists and their use of mobile phones affect the local supporters’ match-day experiences. Through this study, he found that the presence of football tourists and their online engagement can be disruptive to the local football culture. He plans to share these results with both club and English Premier League teams in the future.
American and European soccer research
The Clemson Paralympic Soccer team during their first match
During Clemson’s first-ever Paralympic soccer match, Tobar conducted a survey to understand the perception of players with disabilities. He discovered that 84% of participants had changed their opinions positively towards para-athletes. He also surveyed the perceptions and attitudes of long-term volunteers towards people with disabilities.
Additionally, Tobar has two studies where he focuses on soccer and environmental sustainability. The first follows his attendance at the UEFA EURO, where the institution implemented a €29.6 million investment in environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives. The tournament achieved a 21% reduction in emissions compared to initial forecasts, largely through measures like encouraging public transport and minimizing flights. This study was focused on whether these changes towards sustainability changed fan behavior after the championship.
The second was focused on the Clemson Women’s Soccer team. In 2024, Tobar accompanied the team to Spain, where they observed how facilities and clubs tackle climate change. Now that a year has passed, he is asking 19 players and two managers if they have changed their behaviors and show that the players can have a voice and help others become more environmentally friendly.
The documentary
Tobar and colleague speaking on their documentary in Colombia
Tobar has recently launched his documentary called “The Match That Not Every Club Wants to Play.” This documentary takes viewers to Spain, showing the Real Madrid soccer club and how it attempted to keep its role in the Spanish Civil War a secret. It also takes us to FC St. Pauli in Germany, where the club is a symbol of resistance, and where the fans demand accountability for the club’s Nazi-era past.
Just like Tobar, this documentary is making its way around the world. It debuted at the Tercer Tiempo-Festival Mundial de Cine Futbolero in Bogotá, Colombia, where his father is from. There, he received a “Special Mention” for the quality of the production and thought-provoking investigation. Additionally, it was the first film in six years to have a full-house at the viewing.
Soon, the documentary will be shown at the Sports & Entertainment Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama, the Festigol, Festival de Cine + Futbol, in Santiago, Chile, and at the Paladino D’Oro in Palermo, Italy, which is the world’s oldest sport film festival.
Coming up…
Following his first documentary, Tobar is in the process of developing another around the unspoken functions of Weserstadion in Bremen during the Nazi regime. The Nazis took it and used Eastern European slaves to build military defense structures. The stadium also facilitated the distribution of furniture from Jewish houses, and even today, much of this furniture is still not found.
Additionally, Tobar is studying how cultures influence how coaches coach their players. He plans to interview professional and collegiate coaches to understand how culture shapes play style. His brother is a coach for the most important Division One team in Ecuador, which is inspiring this study.
He is also working with Master’s students and colleagues from Colombia, Spain, and Chile to take a look at paralympic soccer and analyze how countries organize offensively and defensively. They are asking the question, “What is the best way to win games?” Paralympic players expend three times more energy than normal players, so they work to prove that the best paralympic teams play zone, which allows more conservation of energy, versus a man-to-man structure.
Housed in the Department of Communication and currently led by RHBSSI Faculty Fellow, Brandon Boatwright, Ph.D., the Clemson University Social Media Center (SMLC) is an interdisciplinary lab that utilizes industry-leading social analytics software to harvest, analyze and engage in social media conversations across thousands of sources of digital data. The SMLC is a cutting-edge laboratory that supplies researchers at Clemson with data for a diverse range of topics and projects.
Brandon Boatwright, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Communication and director of the SMLC
Sports researchers at Clemson have utilized the SMLC to advance their studies in the behavioral sciences, such as in sports communication and education. Boatwright has partnered with other fellows in the Department of Communication, such as Virginia Harrison, Ph.D., and fellows Sarah Stokowski, Ph.D., and Chris Corr, Ph.D., from Clemson University’s athletic leadership program in the Department of Educational and Organizational Leadership Development on recent studies that have examined social media trends to collect qualitative data.
Published this year in the journal Communication & Sport, a study by Boatwright, Stokowski, Corr and colleague Marry Holly from the University of Florida, titled The Local Perspective: Regional Television Framing of Name, Image, and Likeness, utilized the SMLC “…to examine the manner in which local television media in the United States framed NIL during news broadcasts,” analyzing television broadcast content across the United States during Fall 2024. Helpful for collegiate athletic administrators, the study revealed that a similar number of comments framed NIL positively, for promotion, and negatively, for its disruption.
Prior to this, in 2023, Harrison and colleagues from her department, as well as from The Pennsylvania State University, announced their study, “Save Our Spikes”: Social Media Advocacy and Fan Reaction to the End of Minor League Baseball, published in Communication & Sport. The team utilized the SMLC to collect “…social media data to extract fan emotions during identity threats” on X (formerly known as Twitter) surrounding the decline of Minor League Baseball during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. “…the study found that most discussions of contraction were negative in tone and contained emotions like anger” and, overall, made an important contribution to the field “…by bringing advocacy communication into the discussion of sport fandom” and using social media data to shed light on sport fan emotions during a crisis.
The SMLC serves as one of the premier social media laboratories in the nation with the ability to harvest data, only scratching the surface of social media research and application. To that end, the SMLC provides students and researchers with tools and techniques to analyze and make sense out of datasets. The SMLC can support various methodological approaches from content analysis, sentiment analysis, network analysis and more. Click here to learn more about the SMLC.
Hardie and the SADEV group having dinner in Costa Rica
In June 2025, Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, Ashlyn Hardie, Ph. D., recently embarked on a journey to Costa Rica. She was accompanied by Mike Clark, former assistant director for Clemson Student-Athlete Development, Nick Singleton, assistant director for Clemson Student-Athlete Development, and nine female student-athletes from Clemson Women’s Rowing, Track and Field, Softball and Gymnastics.
Clemson Student-Athlete Development (SADEV) is a branch within Clemson Athletics where staff work with student-athletes to help them grow in their leadership skills, prepare for post-graduation careers and work on holistic human development. The Director of Student-Athlete Development, Tori Niemann, and Dr. Hardie originally connected because of Hardie’s research expertise on women in sport and sport in the international context. Subsequently, Hardie began to assist the SADEV staff in their goal to ensure the service trip to Costa Rica was intentional, impactful, had measurable research outcomes, and would benefit the Costa Rican community.
Hardie’s research emphasizes the importance of understanding intention versus impact in international development and service work. Her mission is to help others understand that in order to make a positive change, there has to be more than just positive intention; service providers and volunteers also have to acknowledge and embrace the culture and norms of the country they are in to optimize positive outcomes for all parties. According to Hardie, she was really impressed with the SADEV staff’s intentionality in learning about ethical international service practice and prioritizing that in the trip preparations.
Embarking on the trip
On the trip, all of the student-athletes were women, and the two staff members leading the trip, Clark and Singleton, were men. So, in addition to Hardie’s professional contributions, she was excited to be an example to these young women of an experienced female traveler. Hardie shared, “While it wasn’t the intended purpose of my role on the trip, I cherish any opportunity to be an example for young women of how to break out of their comfort zone, embrace different cultures and different people, and seize opportunities to grow through travel. The idea of traveling internationally as a young woman can feel daunting or unsafe, but it makes all the difference to have an example and mentor who can share some helpful tips and support in the process.”
The team on a zip-lining excursion through the rainforest
During their service trip, student-athletes learned about the local communities and cultures of Costa Rica, explored the city, zip-lined through the rainforest, gained deeper insight into the ecological elements of Costa Rica and the importance of eco-friendly practices in their culture. The main purpose of the trip, which took up four of the six days of the trip, was to work at a school in the rural mountains of Costa Rica called La Jolla. There, they helped build a community space with a kitchen and bathroom area, along with more creative tasks such as painting signs in English with the school’s core values so that the Costa Rican students could learn English and important values such as empathy and self-awareness. Clemson athletes also helped with general clean-up, participated in a Father’s Day fundraiser and dance classes, and supported with other tasks during the week.
The team standing in front of the school they worked at throughout their trip
Service trips can benefit both the community that is being assisted and leave participating volunteers with lasting memories, a greater understanding of other cultures, and comfort traveling to a new environment. To this end, Hardie states that there were three main takeaways that were voiced from the Clemson group collectively at the end of their travels.
The first was that the student-athletes expanded their Clemson horizons while abroad and stepped out of their comfort zones. On day one of the trip, the athletes mostly hung out with their teammates and were more reserved; by day six, they formed a little sisterhood and had shared experiences and developed friendships across teams as a result.
The second takeaway was that the student-athletes were able to recognize differences in the way Americans live and what many people take for granted every day. When people picture a trip to Costa Rica, they visualize lying out on the beach during the day and using their resort WiFi to wind down at night, and trust that there will be water coming out of the showerhead so they can rinse off the sand after a long day at the beach. Instead, the women on this trip experienced inconsistency in cell service and WiFi, and the water being shut off for a night at their homestays as a result of a small earthquake (that was not felt by people, but as a safety precaution). Although this made individuals anxious and feel inconvenienced, their host families explained this was relatively normal, which ultimately broadened the scope of Clemson athletes’ understanding of how experiences can vary greatly in other parts of the world.
The team working on curating the garden
The last takeaway that the group expressed was that they had a greater desire to connect and contribute to the community surrounding them. The girls were nervous at first, but once they saw all that they could accomplish, they took pride in their work. They also dove more into the culture, they practiced the language and overcame their own discomfort to connect with their environment. These learnings applied to both the student-athletes and the staff leaders alongside Hardie, who acknowledged in real-time that they were in a new place and were able to embrace new things that they had not experienced before.
Hardie states that this trip allowed for self-reflecting and conquering challenges that the group does not normally encounter day-to-day in Clemson, South Carolina. Instead of preparing for a hard exam or training for a new personal record in their respective sport, the athletes had to navigate language barriers so they could communicate with their host families and learn new norms, try new foods, and navigate new cities/towns.
Six days is a short amount of time to fully appreciate being immersed in a new culture, but the student-athletes made the most out of their time. They connected with the locals and attempted to speak the native language, and even participated in a dance class. Cultural acclimation can take weeks for some, but Hardie was proud of them for going out and trying new things and maximizing the time they had.
Aftermath of the service trip
Ashlyn Hardie and Mike Clark participating in service work
Hardie says that, for the staff and faculty who go on service trips such as these, it allows for moments of learning and reflection that can be utilized to inform future Clemson student-athletes’ community service projects. The impact this group made does not just stay in Costa Rica; it follows them back to Clemson and influences their future projects.
In addition to the service trip itself, Hardie and Niemann partnered together on a research initiative to assess the impact of these opportunities for Clemson student-athletes and donor support. Before, during, and after this trip, Hardie collected data. She challenged the girls to reflect on things like how their identities influence the spaces they are interacting in, cultural understanding and integration, and their own personal development from the trip. She took ethnographic notes throughout this time about her experiences working and interacting with the group, and her observations from the week.
Hardie will be analyzing the qualitative data and asking questions such as, “How did the relationship between the student-athlete development staff and the student-athletes change?” and “What were the most meaningful outcomes for those student-athletes?” and “What was the change in their global perspective?”The information can be used for future trips to prepare student-athletes on how to better interact with other countries, and to seek and interact with donors for projects such as these.
In the future, Hardie is excited to continue working on and supporting international service projects with SADEV as a point-of-contact, regardless of whether or not she travels alongside the team, to provide insight and advice as to how to prepare student-athletes before travelling abroad, as well as support in future research endeavors.
Photos by Josh Wilson, August 2024, Women’s Golf, The Walker Course, Clemson University
Women’s Golf Month is celebrated throughout June each year. This June, we celebrate Clemson Women’s Golf which has a strong history of elite performance and camaraderie with the academics at Clemson University.
Over the years, various faculty at Clemson have studied the science behind the game and its players.
Faculty from Clemson University’s Department of Bioengineering, including Interim Director of the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute, John DesJardins, Ph.D., have studied ‘balance improvements and golf swing kinematic consistency with eight-week balance interventions.’ The purpose of the study, conducted in 2020, was to determine if a training program targeted specifically at balance could enhance players’ overall performance by improving postural stability and swing consistency. After studying eight NCAA Division I players, it was determined that balance training would enhance posture but, while no negative effects were measured, swing consistency did not improve. Another benefit of the study showed the importance of conducting research to help coaches and players understand both the positive and negative effects of their training programs and to potentially make modifications based on that data. While the original study was conducted with male golfers, its conclusions can be applied across teams. Click here to read the full article in the Journal of Sports Research.
Another Clemson faculty member, Gregory Cranmer, Ph.D., from the Department of Communication and fellow of the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute, has studied ‘female golfer’s uncertainty management during their transition into professional golf.’ The 2020 study offers potential strategies for collegiate organizations and professional associations to prepare student-athletes for the uncertain transition into professional golf.
On August 28-29, the Tiger Golf Gathering (TGG) Foundation will host the 2025 Tiger Golf Gathering in Clemson, an annual fundraising event that benefits the Clemson Golf program. The event features a Thursday Open at The Walker Course and Auction Party in the afternoon at the Madren Conference Center and Inn. Friday morning features the Tiger-Am at The Cliffs at Keowee Springs. Meet current and former Tigers and bid on some amazing items to support your Clemson golfers. Sponsorships and online donations are also available.
Click here to learn more about Clemson’s sports science faculty.
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!
This April, Dr. Ashlyn Hardie, Institute fellow from the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, co-led the first-ever Starting Block Accelerator in London, England with Dr. Per Svensson from Louisiana State University. This innovative initiative is the first of its kind, eliciting pioneering research in the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector. Funded by RHBSSI through a seed grant awarded in 2024, this research has already led to notable, practical impacts, scholarly implications and industry partnerships.
The goal of the Starting Block Accelerator is to support nonprofit leaders, and subsequently their SDP organizations and beneficiaries, regarding various aspects of capacity building. The Starting Block Accelerator’s most distinct contribution to the SDP sector and the research within sport management is that the accelerator is entirely evidence-based and designed to bridge the gap between practice and research in SDP.
Five SDP organizations joined Hardie’s crew in London for a four-day intensive workshop where grassroots leaders from around the world were flown in to participate in a research-backed capacity building accelerator. The five organizations selected were invited because they all met the following criteria: their organizations (1) are operating in the late-start-up or early-growth life cycle stages and (2) have diverse geographic locations, cultural contents and/or sports for implementation.
According to Hardie, the goal of the Starting Block is to “bring in these organizations who have been around for a couple of years and are already doing really great things. But, despite how incredible their work is, they struggle to secure resources and make ends meet. Most SDP leaders are coaches and educators in their educational and training background, so we want to support them in developing the managerial and business-oriented skill sets needed to move further into the growth and maturation life cycle stages.”
Meet the team
The SDP organizations, represented by their founders in London, included: X-SUBA, a multi-sport mechanism for youth development based in Uganda; Atoot!, a women and girls empowerment soccer organization based in Nepal; Lwandi Surf, a surf academy for local youth in Mozambique; EmpowerVan, a mobile martial arts and self defense initiative for refugees in Athens, Greece; and Free Movement Skateboarding, a skateboarding initiative for local youth participants, also based in Athens.
Accompanying Hardie, Svensson and these SDP leaders in London, was Dr. Kat Raw from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Though unable to attend in London, Dr. Gareth Jones from Temple University is also a research affiliate of the initiative – ultimately demonstrating the vast networking and collaborative efforts of the Starting Block Accelerator. These collaborations are not just with practitioners and industry leaders but have also led to multi-institutional academic partnerships.
The workshop
After the groups arrived in London, the first workshop day focused on foundational concepts of nonprofit management in SDP. Topics included mission statements, programmatic goals and alignment, and analyzing partnerships and surrounding operational environments for their success. Participants engaged in a series of activities to help challenge, support, refine and rewrite organizational aspects as needed. Having this strong foundation in place allowed for deeper work in the following days to ensure optimal outcomes.
“Day one was very foundational stuff, like ‘Let’s go through all these things, let’s break down the structure of your organization and really understand where you might have any gaps, whatever it is, so we can focus on where to build,’” Hardie said.
Hardie (far left) with her research team and SDP founders on day two of the workshop
Day two focused on various aspects of monitoring and evaluation, analyzing how each organization collects its data and suggesting how to build strong arguments for potential stakeholders by using data to provide evidence of their outcomes to potential partners and funders. Each organizational leader was prompted through a series of activities to contemplate their own data, access to data and opportunities for data collection that could serve their need to demonstrate effectiveness of their outcomes. Consulting was provided regarding data collection, analysis and, ultimately, the storytelling necessary to turn that data into something accessible for potential partners, funders and others.
The next day involved higher-level managerial concepts, discussing various strategies for securing funding, and practical methods for accessing and digesting evidence-based research in SDP. Given the goal of this initiative is to bridge the gap between research and practice, Hardie stated, “Our aim was to help improve their capacities to conduct their own research through developing skills and knowledge on monitoring and evaluation techniques, but also to help them understand what academic research is open-access and available to them, as well as tactics for making this research digestible for practical use.”
Hardie and her team felt this was an essential part of the accelerator, to ensure their participants knew how to access notable findings on SDP organizations. According to Hardie, so many organizations are using trial and error methods on what works and what does not, because so much of scholarly research is buried behind paywalls or written in academic language that is tough to understand for non-native English speakers.
The group working on strategies for organizational improvement in London
“There’s a massive gap, specifically in sport for development, because of the paywall and then the language barrier to such an international industry,” she said. “So, what we did on that third day was really focus on translating… how are we taking research and providing it to them in a way that has no cost and is easy to access and comprehend.”
The fourth and final day focused on developing capacities for innovation within the SDP sector. The content focused on practical techniques that each group could use to be innovative in its leadership, utilize modern resources like artificial intelligence, and strategically innovative in their brand, positioning and partnerships.
To wrap up the initiative, at the end of day four, Hardie and team hosted a networking event for the five participating founders to meet with a group of industry-leading representatives from various globally renowned funding bodies in SDP.
“We set it up like a speed dating event,” said Hardie. “At the start, each of our five participants were able to give a 5-10 minute ‘elevator pitch’ for their organization to the group of funders. Then, we created a rotation of 15-minute cycles where SDP leaders could get personalized feedback from the attending funders – likely individuals who have reviewed their applications in the past or will review applications of theirs in the future.”
A “massive success”
At the end of it all, the event was a “massive success” according to Hardie. Not only did the research team gain valuable feedback and insight from the co-design element of the pilot accelerator but, practically, there were noteworthy developments seen for each organizational leader and the capacities they developed over the week. Networking across the research team, practitioner participants and industry funders was a key takeaway from the event, as it has led to new collaborations, friendships and future funding, research and applied opportunities.
“It was really collaborative and the participants all became seemingly real friends over the course of a few days. It was really special to watch,” she said. “I think, from a positive culture and facilitation standpoint, it was a massive success. But, also from an outcome standpoint, we were so pleased with the engagement and some of the developments, ideas and next steps that came out of the week.”
Starting Block practitioners, SDP organization founders and potential funders meeting on the final day of the workshop
The organizations have expressed immense gratitude for the support they received over the week in London. Historically, SDP groups desperately look for support, seeking resources, partnerships and/or funding – all of which lead to routine rejection and feelings of defeat. To this end, Hardie noted:
“I think just participating in something like this, on its own – regardless of outcomes – restores faith for people. It heals some of their burnout. It heals some of the trauma that these organizational leaders go through by constantly feeling like they’re just hitting dead end after dead end after dead end, or getting rejected consistently by the same funding groups. It kind of breathes life into people in a way. Just like it did for our research team. It heals some of our burnout, some of our frustrations. It restored heightened levels of inspiration and motivation for our research team and those industry leaders too.”
The future of Starting Block
As for the future, Hardie’s team is collecting follow-up data from the Starting Block in London and will continue collecting longitudinal data on the outcomes from the accelerator over the next year. The cohort format is something that the research team plans to keep, bringing in five new organizations in the next cycle, potentially with the mentorship and support from organizations who participated in the cohort before them. In terms of long-term goals, Hardie hopes to finalize an adaptable curriculum and network that allows the Starting Block to support SDP organizations on a pathway out of their start-up phases, into desired positions of growth and organizational stability.
This pilot for the Starting Block Accelerator is hopefully only the start of a multi-prong initiative with resource-providing platforms, with no barrier to entry for the global community of SDP leaders.
“This type of initiative is so wildly innovative, and something that’s so hard and unprecedented to get funding for, especially in sport for development,” Hardie said. “We are sincerely grateful for the RHBSSI seed funding, because it gives really impactful and powerful initiatives like this a chance! A chance to give proof of concept, to collect pilot data to go for bigger funding and, individually, a chance for those practitioners and our research team to engage in once-in-a-lifetime work. So, for that, I am sincerely thankful.”
