Monday, April 18th, was the Ackerman-Allen Shootout for SAU’s men and women golf teams.
Monday, April 18th, was the Ackerman-Allen Shootout for SAU’s men and women golf teams. The games were held at Purdue’s Akerman-Allen Golf Course in West Lafayette, Indiana with ten other teams competing. The men’s golf team finished in third place and the women’s golf team finished in seventh.
Men’s Golf Team
According to the saucougars.com’s article, the men’s golf team finished in 3rd at the Ackerman-Allen Shootout and the cougars ended with a score of 309 in round one and 307 in round two, totaling at 616. Parkland College had won the competition with the score of 591. Taylor University was second with 595.
From the saucougars’ article, the SAU scores and team scoreboard were as follows:
TEAM SCOREBOARD
Parkland – 293-298-591
Taylor – 292-303-595
Spring Arbor – 309-307-616
Indiana Wesleyan – 304-317-621
Olivet Nazarene – 315-313-628
Grace – 315-316-631
Mount Vernon Nazarene – 319-320-639
Huntington – 319-325-644
Taylor (B) – 323-323-646
Bethel – 329-336-665
SPRING ARBOR SCORES
Rory Myers – 72-74-146 (3rd)
Sean Vann – 76-73-149 (7th)
Brett MacNeil – 80-80-160 (t-23rd)
Brett Casto – 89-80-169 (t-45th)
Noah Abbey – 81-95-176 (52nd)
The men golf team will be competing at The Crossroads League Championship at Orchard Ridge County Club in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It will be on April 26-27.
Woman’s Golf Team
According to the saucougars.com’s article, the women’s golf team competed at the Ackerman-Allen Shootout and won seventh place with a score of 700. Taylor University had received first place with a score of 635. Indiana Wesleyan University won second with 639. Third was Bethel University with 640.
Saucougars’ article provided the SAU scores and team scoreboard:
TEAM SCOREBOARD
Taylor – 321-314-635
Indiana Wesleyan – 310-329-639
Bethel – 320-320-640
Olivet Nazarene – 335-342-677
Huntington – 337-352-689
Mount Vernon Nazarene – 342-349-691
Spring Arbor – 352-348-700
SPRING ARBOR SCORES
Jamie Erickson – 85-85-170 (20th)
Kaitlyn Mallory – 86-87-173 (24th)
Caitlin Lysher – 90-86-176 (28th)
Meredith Harkema – 91-92-183 (33rd)
Grace Iacopelli – 94-90-184 (34th)
The women’s golf team will compete at The Crossroads League Championship at Harbor Shores GC in Harbor Shores, Michigan. It will be on May 3-4.
The NAIA National Office announced SAU will host the 2020 NAIA Women’s Soccer National Championship Opening Round.
According to SAUcougars.com, on Wednesday, April 7th, the NAIA National Office announced SAU will host the 2020 NAIA Women’s Soccer National Championship Opening Round. SAU was selected as one out of the ten host sites.
The NAIA Women’s Soccer article states that selections took into account geography, facilities, and host qualification. The nine other schools hosting are:
School Location
Columbia (Mo.) Columbia, Mo.
Cumberlands (Ky.) Williamsburg, Ky.
Indiana Wesleyan Marion, Ind.
John Brown (Ark.) Siloam Springs, Ark.
Marian (Ind.) Indianapolis, Ind.
Martin Methodist (Tenn.) Pulaski, Tenn.
Southeastern (Fla.) Lakeland, Fla.
Westmont (Calif.) Santa Barbara, Calif.
William Carey (Miss.) Hattiesburg, Miss.
The 37th Annual Women’s Soccer National Championship will have opening rounds on the campus sites on April 15th-17th, 2021. The winners will advance to final matches on April 27th-May 3rd, 2021 at the Foley Sports Tourism Championship Field in Foley, Alabama.
The SAU article said each of the 10 opening round sites will feature four teams. Teams, opponents, and schedules for the opening rounds will be available as soon as Monday, April 12th on the NAIA Facebook page.
Sierra Birchmeier-Salow created an Easter Egg Hunt for SAU students.
Chartwells intern, Sierra Birchmeier-Salow, created the Easter Egg Hunt that started after Spring Break on Tuesday, April 6th. She planned the event, hid the eggs, and kept track of how many were found.
Sierra is an SAU Junior majoring in Business Administration. She said she is interning in Marketing at Chartwell and her responsibilities include developing events and promotions. Every month, Sierra helps Chartwell do a food event. A popular thing is doing Christmas cookies during December. Since there are no foods tied to Easter, Sierra decided to create the Easter Egg hunt.
She wanted to find a way to get students “hands on” involved within the Covid-19 season. She planned the Easter Egg Hunt with the Director of Dining, Katie and Cougar Den Manager, Barbie. “So, this was a good idea I thought since you could do it outside and just get the students involved,” Sierra said.
She bought 50 colorful plastic eggs from Meijer and hid them around campus Monday night herself. She hid them in the student center, Poling Center, Whiteman Gibbs, and outside. They had put chocolate and candy in each egg. About 25 eggs also had a $5 dollar coupon to the Cougar Den. Ten eggs had $10 coupons.
She said in the four days almost half of the eggs have come back. “More will trickle in in the next couple of weeks,” Sierra said.
Sierra thinks that event will draw enthusiasm to dine at SAU. It will give students a fun thing to look forward to as they near the end of the semester.
Sierra said Chartwell plans on doing this event again. They hope to expand it and do more eggs and bigger prizes next year.
“I think it was a really fun event and definitely one Chartwell will look forward to doing again. I think it got students more engaged than we have been able to see all year. And I would say overall it was a really positive event,” Sierra said.
Have you found an egg? Share where you found it and what your prize was.
SAU Cougar’s men baseball team won and lost one of the doubleheader games with Grace college last Saturday March 27th. They won 8-5, then in the second game lost 1-7.
The saucougars.com article Baseball wins series with Saturday splitincludes the games’ highlights. In the first games first inning, Zach Kraabel stopped Grace from scoring in the next four frames. In the second inning, SAU offense had five-runs. Third inning, Jackson Kitchen and Vincent Herschberger scored hits back-to-back. Forth inning, Herschberger ripped a RBI double and Glenn Miller scored a two-run home run. In the sixth and seventh innings, the Lancers scored four runs total. In the ninth and final innings, Kraabel earned the win when he striked out “a career-high seven batters”. Cougars won 8-5.
In the second game, Lancers scored a run in the first inning. In the fourth and fifth inning, the Lancers scored six runs total. During the game, Brant Mast scored the only home run during the game. “Landon Raczkowski went 2-for-3 with two doubles,” stated saucougars.com. Also, Ben Garcia and Jakob Southworth threw 2.2 innings of scoreless relief combined. Cougars lost 1-7.
SAU men baseball team will host Rochester University in another doubleheader on Tuesday, March 30th. It will be at 2pm on Hank Burbridge Field.
The Cougar Den is having their final exam event: a ticket contest for five exam care packages.
From March to April, the Cougar Den is running a ticket contest where five students could win a care package for exam week.
Photo of Cougar Den Manager, Barbie
The ticket contest was created by Cougar Den Manager, Barbie. She said the drawing will most likely be on April 30th, the last Friday of the month. She will draw five names, email them, and they can pick them up starting May 3rd. If the student doesn’t respond to the email, she will redraw.
“It’s kind of fun because it is low key,” Barbie said. “It’s just kind of fun I think and different and it will be a nice reward for exam week.”
Barbie said she isn’t sure what will go in the care packages besides her personal treat. “I’m going to personally make some hot chocolate cocoa bombs that I have been playing with,” Barbie said.
Barbie has a list of ideas to get from the Dollar Store or make herself:
Stress ball
Healthy snack
Study supplies
Cookies
Gum
Microwave popcorn
Cereal
Coupons
Muffins
Energy drinks
Playing cards
Coloring books
To enter the contest, all students have to do is buy something with their cougar cash in the Cougar Den. They will be given a blue ticket to sign. The ticket will be added to a jar to be drawn from.
Photo of the jar
“We are having fun filling that jar,” Barbie said. “It’s like a third of the way full. It’s fun watching the jar fill up with the tickets. And it’s easy for people to just write their names down and go…I almost wish I could give everybody one.”
March 31st will be SAU’s first ever Survivor Games. Freshmen and transfers will enjoy five different stations the P.A. Programmers set up.
P.A. Programmers Lindy Palella and Bethany Weidman had created and planned the Survivor Games event on March 31st at 6:30-8:30pm. At Survivor Games, Freshmen and transfers would have played at five different stations across campus with their Core and P.A at the event. The event was announced postponed a day before, March 30th.
Lindy Palella, Senior and Communication Major
Palella said their jobs as programmers are to plan big events for freshman and transfers and provide time for P.A’s to bond with their Core without planning something themselves.
“We are not as public, so people don’t usually know what we do or who we are. Those events don’t magically appear as I thought they did Freshman year,” said Palella.
Palella and Weidman’s five stations would have been:
An easter egg hunt with a puzzle
Telerade (a mixture between charades and telephone)
A First to Laugh Loses competition dad jokes edition
A picture challenge
A trivia challenge
The event was announced postponed when Spring Arbor Announcement sent out an email on March 30th. The email explained the spike Covid cases: 30 positive cases and 125 students in quarantine or isolation. They suspended all campus student activities ill April 12th.
“It is always disappointing when an event is moved but Beth and I are super excited that the event will still go on, just a few weeks after the normal date, ” said Palella.
The programmers were already taking Covid into account with their event. Palella said she and Weidman had a binder full of events that other programmers used in the past but had to throw it out because of Covid. They got creative to find safe events, while avoiding Zoom. They believed students were tired of Zoom because of online classes. They had been thankful that the Freshman class was small enough to meet In-Person regulations before the suspension was announced.
“Our games were chosen specifically because they can be Covid regulated,” Palella said. “Social distancing is definitely a factor in making sure we don’t have large amounts of people in one area.”
Palella and Weidman were already considering postponing the event till April. Some P.A’s would have missed the event if it was on March 31st due to being in quarantine and others being away for sport games.
After a year online, chapel is now available in person. SAU Chaplin, Brian Kono, explains why it’s back.
SAU chapel has moved from online to in-person and live-streamed, starting March 8th. It brings new safety regulations, a sense of community, and positive feelings from those who make chapel the great experience that it is.
Photo of Jasmine Harper
“Man, we’re so excited to spend time with you guys. I feel like we have been dreaming about this day.”
Jasmine Harper – Chapel Band Assistant/Singer
SAU Chaplin, Brian Kono, said the Committee of Corona Virus Planning Team and SAU cabinet (group of vice presidents and president) discussed having in-person chapel. They could have interpreted Michigan’s guidelines regarding gathering worship to allow in person chapel to some degree last fall. They chose to wait till the vaccine was out, numbers declined, and Michigan Health Services set new and broader guidelines for gathering.
They chose March 8th because it was after Spring Break. Kono’s original plan was to not have an in-person chapel throughout the whole semester. They had an alternative plan in case and as things got better, they decided to make the transition half way through J term.
“In regards to the support network we have with the audio, visual, and tech teams, and our chapel band, there were some things that we still needed to get in place in order to make the transition, so while we could have started at the beginning of the semester, it just happened to be the perfect storm in a good way of things coming together for us to make it happen after Spring Break, ” said Kono.
Most of the chapel speakers are willing to deliver their service in person.
“I felt like it went very well,” Kono said, regarding the chapel held on March 8th. “We didn’t fill our compacity of 250, but we certainty had a large gathering of folks who attended and worshipped together and we are encouraged by that.”
One of the chapel band assistants and singer, Jasmine Harper, prefers in-person chapel over online chapel. She said there was something special about connecting with the congregation during live service.
Kono said he prefers in-person chapel and hopes the number in attendance will rise.
A mugshot of Brian Kono.
An in-person chapel allows Kono to:
Connect with people because he can see their faces.
Respond better to community or world happening.
Provide a sense of pastoral care.
Be more flexible with live worship.
In-person chapel also allowed Kono to respond better to worship. He said worshipping while being recorded doesn’t “provide the best context for singing a worship song.”
For recording chapel, he did enjoy creating the program and recording before hand on Friday or Saturday. He didn’t have to worry about speakers being on time or not doing something well.
Recording chapel was not easier than In-Person chapel. There were moving pieces to coordinate and speakers had trouble speaking to a camera instead of a live audience. Putting all the pieces together took a long time.
Harper said she was excited to work with SAU’s video/communication department for the online chapel, but the live-streams made chapel feel like a performance, instead of communal worship. In-person chapel allowed her to receive feedback when worshiping.
“We have a great Almost Chapel production team,” Kono said. “Clayton Saren who’s an adjunct professor but also the head producer of Almost Chapel led a group of students who create the announcement segment of the video. And then, two of the production crew bring all of the pieces together. It is mostly a student team that makes that happen. They work incredible hard and I am grateful for them.”
To attend, students, staff, and faculty have to reserve a spot at signup.com. Kono sends out a link every week. Harper encourages students to sign up for chapel.
From Kono’s advice and his email, students are asked to:
Not come to in-person chapel if they are feeling unwell.
Not come if they answer ‘yes’ to any of the health screening questions on the SAU app.
Wear a mask.
Enter through the main door to the building underneath the portico.
Avoid congregating at doors and spread out to use doors throughout the foyer area.
Sit in the available rows on the main floor of the auditorium and move toward the middle of the pew.
Sit at least an arms length from your neighbor.
Exit through the closest exit door and avoid cueing.
SAU is following the Arbiter’s guidelines. SAU follows their attendance restrictions and has limited the attendance to 250 people. The Arbiter has agreed to leave their ribbons up, which provide distancing between people.
“I think there is a pretty large segment of population on campus who really enjoy chapel,” said Kono. “Having no place where we can get together, see each other, and worship together all semester through the fall has kept the university from feeling a greater sense of community. On Monday, a number of students mentioned to me how grateful they were to be able to gather in that way because it just felt like they were apart of something bigger than themselves while they were here on campus”
SAU has a chapel because they view it as a key part in creating a community of learners. It is required for students who aren’t commuters because it is a space for everyone to come together to hear a common message. Kono said that we should consider church as our lifelong place of learning.
He said it is a place where we focus on Jesus Christ as our perspective for liberal living and learning. Also, speakers from different disciplines are brought in to challenge us to think about how we can be “critical participants in the contemporary world”.
While Kono couldn’t find the exact date chapel was created, the way chapel is presently has existed since the 1980’s when Kono’s predecessor, Ron Kopeck, was in charge.
Kono hopes chapel is a place to encourage and challenge people. He said that before Covid, chapel was also the one place where you see most of the student body come together. People develop a sense of coming together to do something special at SAU.
Chapel will mostly be on Mondays. There will be some occasions of a Wednesday chapel due classes being canceled on the Easter travel day. There is also an extra all worship chapel on March 31st. SAU intends to have Monday and Wednesday chapel next fall.
The SAU men’s Baseball Team won their forth game in a row against Siena Heights last Wednesday, March 10th.
SAU men’s baseball team won against Siena Heights last Wednesday March 10th. They scored 8 to Siena’s 6 at Adrian, Michigan.
Image of Brant Mast was provided by saucougars.com
According to the saucougars article Baseball Wins Fourth Straight, SAU has won four straight games, including a conference series. The victory against Siena Heights was a team effort. The team roster is available here. The game highlights are below.
Photo of Jackson Kitchen was provided by saucougars.com
The cougar’s scored first. During the first inning, Brant Mast did a triple and hit the ball into play and reached third base without intervention. He scored on a Runs Batted In (RBI) groundout by Jackson Kitchen. This means Kitchen had hit the ball on the ground to a fielder and his plate appearance helped Mast score.
Landon Raczkowski made home runs. Siena Heights made some miscue, allowing the Cougars to score two more runs. The score was 6-2.
Photo of Landon Raczkowski was provided by saucougars.com
In the ninth the score was 8-5. Siena Heights scored a run and filled all three bases with runners. Vincent Herschberger earned a save and the final score was 8-6.
Image of Vincent Herschberger was provided by saucougars.com
According to the 2020-21 Baseball Schedule, the men’s baseball team has a five-win streak. They had won 2-1 on March 5th and 6-2 and 5-1 on March 8th against Mount Vernon Nazarene. After this victory, on Friday March 12, the Cougars scored 8-5 against Saint Francis. They have a doubleheader on Saturday March 13th in Fort Wayne, Indiana against Saint Francis. Their next game is March 16th in Adrian, MI against Siena Heights at 2pm.
The Spring Arbor University men’s tennis team won against Albion College last Tuesday, February 23.
The Spring Arbor University men’s tennis team won against Albion College last Tuesday, February 23.
According to the saucougars.com’s article: Men’s Tennis defeats Albion in Spring Debut, the match was the first game of the spring season. The Cougars won with a score of 6-3. This makes the fifth consecutive year Spring Arbor University won its spring opener.
The victory was also the sixth straight win against the Britons when the 2014 and 2015 season are included.
The Human Condition and God’s Nature is returning to the Andrews Hall Lobby on March 18th.
Photo of Ryan Northup provided by him
Ryan Northup’s Bible study group is coming back to Andrews Hall after Spring Break. The first meeting will be in person on Thursday, March 18th in the Andrews Hall Lobby.
The group is called The Human Condition and God’s Nature. Unlike many other Bible groups, Northup’s club focuses on the Old Testament.
Northup said he wanted to find a book of the Old Testament because many other groups focus on the New Testament. He wanted to find a book that other people would enjoy talking about and wouldn’t be too hard to understand.
“Psalm is a really good book that has a lot of emotions and perspective in it so I thought it would be really good to make a Bible study out of it.” said Northup.
Northup said he created the group last September of 2020. He wanted to show people that even though they fall short of God’s standard, He is always going to be faithful to them. He wanted his Bible study to be a comfortable place for people who struggle with their faith and have doubts.
Northup starts his Bible group meetings with an icebreaker. He comes up with a different question that is usually tied to the passage they are reading. Then, each member will read a few verses from that chapter of the Psalm. If there is time, Northup will take prayer requests at the end.
He said leading the Bible group made him think about how he wanted to teach the Bible to others. Also, it made him think about how he could look at a passage and see how it could teach other people and not just himself.
“I think it [the Bible study] has made me and the other members of my group think about how we can worship God through everything that we do, and it has helped us appreciate who God is a lot more,” Northup said.
To create his Bible group, Northup talked to Sierra Traub who designs the posters for every Bible study. She also promotes the Bible studies on the SAU Spiritual Life Instagram page.
Usually he had 3 to 4 members at each meeting before he went on Zoom. Then, attendance decreased. He thought that the reason for the decrease in attendance was because of the change in Covid protocol. They started out in person but ended on Zoom. He felt it was difficult for people to want to go because they were tired from all the Zoom meetings or, if it was in person, they were tired of wearing their masks everywhere.
Northup thought that going to a Bible study would help people’s feelings about Covid. He said he covered Psalm 91 last semester and the chapter was about God’s protection. It mentioned God protecting people in the midst of sickness or pandemic.
“Because you’ve made the Lord my refuge, the Most High, your place of residence—no evil will happen to you; no disease will come close to your tent.” –Psalm 91:9
Common English Bible
Currently Northup and other Spiritual Life team members are greeting at Call of worship. Be sure to reach out if you are interested.
