Nick Kieser

He infected the Phoenix with his no holds barred approach to the game, diving for grounders, sprinting on and off the field between innings and to first after drawing a base on balls. CU coach Ryan Hunt described his second baseman as a ‘live wire. A hard-nosed guy that gets after it.’

“Last year was difficult for me as a baseball player and as a person,” Darrell-Hicks said. “It was hard to keep dealing with the failure I had."

Jenkins, an unassuming community of 2,000 people in rural Letcher County, Kentucky, just so happens to be home to a basketball legend – 23-year-old Whitney Creech. The former WKU Lady Topper star scored 5,527 points as a member of the Jenkins women’s basketball team from 2012-16, a state record that stands today.

Down in the bayou of Louisiana, LSU football reigns as a supreme college football program with four national championships, two Heisman Trophy winners, and one diehard fan. Since the late 1960s, the Tigers have had a fan who has relentlessly devoted his life to LSU football.

Asher Postman sat in his bedroom studio during a Zoom interview. His AKG c414 studio microphone provided, crystal clear audio quality, and soundproofed walls appeared behind his left shoulder. Dark brown wavy hair flowed atop from Asher’s head and stopped at his neckline. Light stubble was apparent on his upper lip and chin, and then his silvery voice came over the microphone Asher, 23, and raised on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is pursuing his passion for music as a freelance producer in electronic dance and pop music.

The afternoon of Feb. 15 featured temperatures in the high 40s, and the sun intermittently brightened what was otherwise a partly cloudy day at Nick Denes Field. To the 507 fans in attendance, the weather was perfect for baseball, even if that wasn’t true just days before.

Former WKU softball player Larissa Franklin recently became the Hilltopper program’s first-ever Olympic qualifier when Canada secured one of six spots in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with a 7-0 run rule win over Brazil on Sept. 1.

“I love how they keep him in their hearts and they always remember him. We have always kept Mason’s jersey in the dugout since he has passed away. It’s just a fixture in our dugout and that is something that touched me and my wife Janet’s hearts.”