Goshen College’s athletic teams posted a 3.2 average GPA last semester, a recent report revealed. This adds yet another semester to the program’s perfect record of over 3.0 since stats were first kept in 2007.   The women’s cross country team, which won the 2019 Academic Team of the Year award, remains at the top of the leaderboard with an average GPA of 3.70.  Women’s track and field is next on the list with a 3.48 average, followed by men’s tennis at 3.46, and women’s volleyball at 3.45.  Rustin Nyce, head coach of the two highest scoring teams, women’s cross country...

By Sierra Ross Richer • January 16, 2020 • Sports

Max Burkholder, a senior biology major, is one of seven Maple Leafs who will compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics cross country championship race in Vancouver, Washington, on Friday. The conference race (which took place on Nov.  9) had a lot of pressure on it for your team to make nationals. Did you feel pressure going into it? Yeah, I definitely did, especially since I’m a senior. I knew it could have been my last race, so I was like, “I’m just gonna go.”  There was definitely some motivation from that. Tell me about the race.  You were...

By Sierra Ross Richer • November 29, 2019 • Sports

Seth Weaver, a senior biology major, was featured on ESPN 3 on October 27 in the Ultimate Frisbee National Championships. Despite coming into the tournament ranked sixth in the USA Ultimate (USAU) Men’s Club Division, Weaver’s team, Chicago Machine, made it to the finals. Machine fell just short of the title, with a 13-12 loss to Seattle Sockeye, but Weaver himself put up an impressive performance with a number of key plays. Machine signed Weaver in July 2019, but he has been playing Ultimate professionally since February, when he was offered a spot on Chicago Wildfire, Chicago’s professional Frisbee team,...

By Sophia Martin • November 18, 2019 • Features

If you asked Dan Kipchumba to describe the beginning of his running career, which began in February 2017, he would label those early days as “absolutely terrible.”  Running purely for the satisfaction, Kipchumba began building a base for what would become an opportunity to participate in one of the most successful seasons Goshen College’s Cross Country team has seen, and a ticket out of his hometown of Eldoret, Kenya.  “My journey to Goshen College is a little mysterious,” Kipchumba said. “I was on my way to a university in West Virginia when I decided to stop and greet my long-time...

By Spencer Waterman • November 1, 2019 • Sports

Panera boxed lunches were piled high on Friday, Mar. 29 in the third floor connector as students gathered for student senate’s final Open Space of the semester. The focus of the discussion was working to improve the relationship between student-athletes and the rest of campus.   Senate collaborated with the Student Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) to plan the event. Samantha Shank, in charge of publicity and marketing, said that the partnering between senate and SAAC “provided extra support and more insight into this conversation.”   The event was attended by non-athletes as well as representatives from many teams, including baseball,...

By Megan Bower • April 4, 2019 • News

While many students are heading somewhere warm for Goshen College’s mid-term break, four Goshen College track and field athletes will instead travel to frigid Brookings, South Dakota to represent the program at the NAIA indoor track and field national meet. Junior Siana Emery, sophomore Suzette Rodriguez, and first-years Hayley Bickford and Simon Graber Miller will leave early in the morning of Feb. 27. All athletes will compete on Friday, March 1. Head coach Rustin Nyce, throws coach Nick Banke and jumps coach Kyle Mischler will join the four athletes on the trek to South Dakota. While Goshen College racewalkers have...

By Brandon Roe • February 22, 2019 • Features

Goshen College basketball senior guard Demarkus Stuckey was selected as the NAIA National Men’s Basketball Div. II Player of the Week for the week of Jan. 28 to Feb. 3. The Saginaw, Michigan native posted well above average numbers in his two conference games throughout the week. Stuckey averaged 31.5 points, 4.5 assists and 4.5 rebounds during the week. Stuckey also placed the dagger into the previously number-one-ranked Indiana Wesleyan University with a game-winning three-pointer in the final seconds of the matchup. In game one on a Tuesday night, the Maple Leafs traveled to Grace College and Stuckey put on...

By Ben Cotton • February 15, 2019 • Sports

Vincent Kibunja is a junior from Nakuru, Kenya. He was the 2017-18 Maple Leaf Male Athlete of the Year, and currently holds the second-fastest 8k time in school history (24:54.6). How long have you lived in the U.S.? More than two years. Have you been able to go back home at all? I haven’t gone back to Kenya. But I’m going to be going next summer with my fiancé and her family. You were at Monroe College in New York City before coming to Goshen. How did you find out about Monroe? It was on Mar. 1 of 2016. I...

By Siana Emery • January 17, 2019 • Features

The inaugural year for the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) at Goshen College is set to give a voice to athletes, bridge the divide of students on campus and give back to local and national charitable organizations. The committee was introduced by first-year GC athletic director Harold Watson. Watson is striving to engineer a strong athletic department by elevating the status of student-athletes in the department. “I just want to first create leaders,” Watson said. “Also, I want to hear what’s important to them and this group is empowered to speak on behalf of their teams.” The implementation of SAAC provides...

By Nick Yutzy • November 28, 2018 • Sports

Four minutes into the first game of the 2017 season, Caitlyn O’Neal, a senior, attacked the basket and was hit by a defender, tearing her anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL. As painful as the injury was for Caitlyn, it was also hard for her teammate and twin sister, Carley O’Neal. After all, the girls had been playing basketball together their entire lives. “When Caitlyn tore her ACL, the first thing that came into my mind was sadness and disappointment,” said Carley. “I didn’t want to believe that our last season of basketball together was taken away from us.” Last year,...

By Alyson Prigge • October 3, 2018 • Features

Goshen College has started a new committee on campus to work with athletic coaches and academic faculty in order to avoid putting students in the middle of conflicts. The committee was formed last semester and met for the first time on Jan. 12. The committee is made up of several faculty members who volunteer their time and energy to act as liaisons for their departments. The idea is that this will enhance communication between athletic and academic programs. “On many campuses, [academics and athletics] are seen as competing areas, but we see tremendous value in the partnership,” said Josh Gleason,...

By Elsa Lantz • January 25, 2018 • Features

Sophomores Vincent Kibunja and Chelsea Foster each posted personal-best times and top-100 finishes to cap their 2017 campaigns on Saturday, Nov. 18th at the NAIA Men’s and Women’s Cross Country National Championship at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Kibunja’s national birth continued the program’s deeply-rooted success as the Monroe College transfer and Nakuru, Kenya native helped mark the seventh consecutive year a Maple Leaf man has reached the national stage. Kibunja did not disappoint. Kibunja ticked a second off his previous personal record set at the end of September in Louisville to finish in 26 minutes, 13 seconds, a...

By Chandler Ingle • November 30, 2017 • Sports

Last year, Chandler Ingle saw a need on campus and decided he had the solution: he started a Goshen College chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. A current junior, he started an FCA chapter last year with former Goshen student Whitney Peterson because he noticed what he deemed as a lack of spiritual activity on campus. This year he took the reins and is leading the group by himself. Ingle started the group as a way to bring more Christian ministry to the campus. He compares the group to a bible study or a youth group. The group meets...

By Nathan Pauls • November 2, 2017 • News

Alhassan Barrie speaks five languages: English, Dutch, French, German, and Creole English. He has lived in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Gambia, the United States, and Belgium. As Neal Young, the men’s basketball coach, said, Barrie is “the definition of a global citizen” at a college that counts global citizenship as a core value. Barrie was born in Sierra Leone, but has lived most of his life in Antwerp, Belgium, paying little attention to basketball until he was introduced to a basketball program at his high school. “I really didn’t want to do it,” he said, “but my mom basically...

By Jesse Amstutz • December 8, 2016 • Sports

During the winter months in Northern Indiana, it can be hard for certain teams to work out on the fields due to snow and cold. With the intense weather conditions, the baseball and softball teams have to practice indoors to get ready for the spring season. A few years ago, the baseball and softball teams used to practice in the gym but during a summer volleyball tournament, the batting cages fell, injuring several people. After the incident, Josh Keister, athletic director, knew that the batting cages needed to be moved to a safer location. Along with the accident, hitting baseballs...

By Spencer Buttermore • December 8, 2016 • News