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By Haley Rey, Editor in Chief Photos from Haley Rey, Phoebe McCutcheon, and McKendree University It’s no secret that the majority of students at McKendree belong to a sports team. With 36 teams, there are hundreds of hours poured into training each week. Coaches take care of their athletes in plenty of ways, but the credit for keeping the bodies of athletes in a competition-ready condition—or helping to heal them from injury—belongs to the school’s athletic trainers. Chloe Knight works with Men’s and Women’s Hockey, Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving, and Men’s and Women’s Water Polo at the McKendree Metro RecPlex. She works both practices and events for all teams, dividing up hours with trainer Brooke Buchmueller. “I would say I work—on average—between 40-50 hours per week...

By Haley Rey, Editor in Chief Photos from McKendree University and Haley Rey Homecoming is a time when a school invites alumni and former staff back to celebrate the school’s history and success. At McKendree, the celebration often includes a tailgate, a crowd-heavy football game, special campus events all week, and alumni reunions. COVID-19 prevented many of the homecoming celebrations last year, or pushed them online. This year, we’re back and ready to have some fun! There are many special things that have happened this week, like theme days, a dodgeball tournament, and a movie night. Today, homecoming court voting ends, and tomorrow, there will likely be games and food trucks at the quad during lunch time, followed by volleyball and soccer games and a parade-decorating party b...

By Kenneth Glidden, Head Culture Co-Writer Photos from Kenneth Glidden Here at McKendree, the sports culture is quite immense and for most of us, the sport we participate in has been our sport for years upon years. I started swimming when I was 12 for my school’s team, which only trained once a week. I immediately fell in love and two years later I joined one of my island’s club teams where I swam for another four years before I began my collegiate career here at McKendree.  I had a blast swimming for the Bearcats my freshman, sophomore and junior year, but as all swimmers know, the grind is real; the hard work is the foundation of the sport. Few sports can relate to swimming, since other sports have skills and abilities that allow you to be a great player without being at p...

By Dylan Powell, Head Sports Writer Photos from Zariah Valentine The McKendree Powerlifting team participated in the first matchup of the season on October 16 in St. Louis at the USA Powerlifting Series Finals, but under an unprecedented circumstance: they were without a coach. In late September of this year, Coach Guillermo Blanco departed from McKendree. “The current situation with the coaching is that we don’t have a coach or even adult supervision to make sure we are fine,” says Zariah Valentine, a freshman. “It affects my season a lot because I won’t have anyone in my corner to calm me down or be my motivation during a meet. It’s going to be hard to do literally everything by myself at a meet.” Despite the departure, former Coach Blanco still checks in with the team, lea...

By Dylan Powell, Head Sports Writer Photos from McKendree University and act.edu On McKendree’s campus, there are so many clubs, activities, and organizations that are considered Registered Student Organizations (RSOs), that many members of the student body forget that we have Greek Life on campus! Students often overlook emails and bulletin boards in the buildings on campus, not realizing when Greek life events are going on and what they entail. Here at McKendree, we have the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, the governing body led by director Calvin Wertman. Under his direction is the Inter-Greek Council, a student-led organization who overlooks our five Greek groups on campus. The five groups consist of two fraternities, Alpha Delta Gamma (ADG) and Phi Beta Sigma (Sigmas...

By Marisa Ortega, Editor Photo from Marisa Ortega On October 12th, I had the honor of attending a presentation by Joe Koppeis, along with other students, about how he got to be where he is today. Joe Koppeis is an entrepreneur from Columbia, Illinois and is a current McKendree University Board of Trustee member. He is the owner and president of Admiral Parkway, Inc. along with developing, owning and operating several office buildings, shopping centers and supermarkets. He also owns Ace Hardware franchises, Domino’s Pizza franchises, and Holiday Inn & Express Hotel & Suites across Southern Illinois. Mr. Koppeis is a very successful man, but that isn’t to say he hasn’t had challenges in life and even hit rock bottom.  At the young age of 13, he started working in the g...

By Chloe Gamber, Head Academic Writer Photos from mosaictreecounseling.com and world.edu Everyone gets burnt out from schoolwork, no matter who they are. Constantly worrying about a grade or just forcing yourself out of bed can be a struggle everyone has felt. The transition of semesters is also a hassle because we have to create a whole new routine again. Managing your involvement in organizations, sports, or a job are major stressors on their own, let alone a full workload from classes each week. Some will be ending their half-semester courses this week, which are very difficult courses to manage. I, personally, have struggled with eight-week courses because there is such a heavy workload in such a small amount of time. Regardless of the length, it is impossible to really get the ...

By Abigail Kishimoto, Head Culture Co-Writer Photos from Phoebe McCutcheon, Head Photographer & Designer These past two years have brought a lot of change around McKendree, one significant change being the disbanding of the Marching Bearcat Band and the creation of the Spirit Band. The Spirit Band was introduced this year in place of the marching band for multiple reasons, but the main reason is that the Spirit Band is aiming to be a band that supports the entire school—more like a pep band. Currently, you can find the Spirit Band at football games, and hopefully in the near future you will be able to see them at other events around the school!  I had a chance to talk to Zach Langa, a senior alto sax player, and Bre Sampo, a junior color guard member, about their experie...

By Lauren Wilk, Editor Photos from Lauren Wilk and amazon.com The summer of 2016 is popularly deemed as the closest we have been to world peace. It was a time of unity, exercise and the outdoors - Pokémon GO made its debut to mobile devices and for the first time, the world saw public spaces full of people of all ages, interacting and bonding over Pokémon.  Wikipedia says that Pokémon GO is a mobile game released in July 2016 that was developed and published by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for iOS and Android devices. It is free to play, but features in-app purchases and advertising that allow it to profit. The app uses the player’s GPS and augmented reality (AR) to simulate Pokémon appearing in real-world locations. The AR settings can be t...

By Haley Rey, Editor in Chief Photos from McKendree University McKendree’s Swim and Dive Team, established in 2016, practices between 18 and 20 hours a week. There are two-hour swim practices each week day afternoon and on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings, and one-hour weights sessions on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  The team practices in the McKendree MetroRecPlex (aside from weights sessions), which was built in 2017. In case you’ve never been in a college competition pool, it is 25 yards long, and the RecPlex’s pool has 10 lanes. At the bottom of each lane is a black line that spans the length of the pool. Swimmers stare at this black line—or at the ceiling, during backstroke—for 16 hours a week. A few years ago, a friend asked me what I thought about for tw...