PioSportsExpedition Episode 1 – Pio Premier

Welcome to PioSportsExpedition, where we update you about Pioneer Athletics. These minisodes are designed to give a brief overview of recent athletic events, along with focusing on a particular team or event. This week’s minisode will take you inside Pio baseball and softball.

A Lesson From Student Financial Services

Members of the Student Financial Services staff, Diana Meyer and Karen Fobert joined Director, Glendi Gattis who presented a “Need Analysis 101” seminar to the coaching staff.  Coaches are usually the primary contact during the recruiting process, and can be faced with a multitude of questions from potential student-athletes and their families regarding financial aid.  This seminar provided a great deal of valuable information so the coaching staff could be better equipped to provide some basic  information as well as know where to appropriately direct specific inquiries to Student Financial Services.  It most definitely gave the coaching staff a glimpse into the effort and hard work that Glendi and her staff put in!

Fun In The Training Room!

Members of the cross country team recovering from a tough workout with a nice, chilly ice bath.

How many people can you put in a 110 gallon tub? The more the merrier.

A little treatment before soccer practice.

Pumping Up Pamplin Tours

Athletics Director Clark Yeager and student-athletes and SAAC members David Berman and Lindsay Nixon, met with the student tour guides from the Admissions Office to provide them with interesting data about the athletics and physical education department to better engage and inform prospective students and their parents during their regular stop at the Pamplin Sports Center.  Information ranged broadly from the fact that 75% of Lewis & Clark graduates take more than the required two physical education activity courses and that the only Rhodes scholar selected from L& C was a student-athlete. The student tour guides asked very good questions and collected a great deal of information.  Lindsay and David added more personal detail and insight into the life of a student-athlete in more intimate breakout sessions following the information session.

Earlier in the day the entire physical education and athletic staff met with John Schneider from the Counseling Center, Bess Austin from the Health Center and Melissa Osmond from Health and Wellness to discuss how we could all best collaborate to help our students cope with common issues of stress, anxiety, eating disorders and abuse of alcohol and other drugs.  It was very evident that these friends of students were very aware and knowledgeable of the many issues that face student-athletes and very respectful of the role coaches play in their lives.  It was an inspiring and productive collaboration of professionals with the real beneficiary being L & C students.

Dig Pink

On Friday, October 17, the Pioneer volleyball team sponsored Dig Pink night, a breast cancer awareness event and fundraiser. Pioneer fans were given the opportunity to donate spare change for Breast Cancer research and program development. The most obvious, and most fun, part of the night was that BOTH teams donned pink jerseys. Whitman wore a light pink, with the Pioneers in a dark pink. The Pioneer coaching staff draped themselves in pink feather boas, which led to a fantastic moment when Head Coach Lori Jepsen was “pointing out” to the down official something that the other team was doing wrong at the net where he should have been calling a foul. Her adamant and demonstrative explanation of what he might have missed while calling the match was very surreal when she was doing so while still wearing the feather boa.

Both the Whitman Missionaries and the Pioneers were Digging Pink

The Pioneer volleyball team is currently tied for first place in the NWC. This was their fifth match victory in a row (they went on to win #6 on Saturday when they swept the Whitowrth Pirates). I love that a team that is having their best season in 17 years can still be loose enough to don pink and pink feather boas, have some fun, and help raise breast cancer awareness. It was a great night!