Kakaw is the new law in St. Louis sports. The city of St. Louis felt the heartbreak of losing their football team when the Rams left for Los Angeles in 2015 and the feeling lingered in the hearts of sports fans in the Lou, until now. The St. Louis Battlehawks have captured the hearts of sports fans, not just in St. Louis, but across the midwest and the country. Known for their immediate success on the field and extravagant post-game celebrations, the BattleHawks have quickly filled the football vacancy in one of the greatest sports cities in America. 

The BattleHawks are the only XFL team that is in a market that doesn’t have an NFL counterpart. This gives them the advantage of being St. Louis’ football team, a responsibility that they don’t take lightly. They currently lead the XFL East in the standings with a 3-1 record and a 2-0 record at home in “The Dome.” 

St. Louis football fans have welcomed the BattleHawks in with open arms, so much so that they set the season high for attendance in the XFL for the home opener against the New York Guardians. The crowd of close to 30,000 was considered a sell out because tickets were not sold for the upper deck. The bowl was full creating a loud and electric atmosphere to welcome St. Louis’ newest team home for the first time. It was also the perfect timing, the Sunday following Mardi Gras. St. Louis was already rocking, but now there was football to go with it. 

Last week, SLU’s Sports Business Association hosted an event in the business school with four members of the BattleHawks front office. Team President, Kurt Hunzeker; Director of Corporate Partnerships, Gabe Rendon; Senior Manager of Marketing and Communications, Catherine Boyle; and Ticket Sales and Experience Manager, Andrew Myer all sat down to explain and answer student’s questions about the new franchise. SBA President Rebecca Duttlinger said, “We thought having the BattleHawks on campus to speak would be a great opportunity to introduce students and professors to a brand new St. Louis professional sports organization in a professional and interactive way. We are so lucky and thankful that we had the opportunity to work with them.” 

All of the panelists called St. Louis home before they came to work for the BattleHawks and the new job opportunity served as a homecoming for some. It all started around eight months ago with a “crash course of how to build a sports team from scratch,” in Hunzeker’s words. He said that the best thing about it is that “no one can tell any of us that we are doing it wrong, because no one has ever done what we are trying to do before.” He then laughed and said that they may not be doing it right, but they aren’t doing it wrong either. 

They love engaging with the community, a strategy the previous football team in St. Louis appeared to struggle in. “‘Fun’ was at the forefront, [but for] me being approachable was absolutely mandatory,” said Hunzeker. This willingness to communicate with fans is extremely apparent through his use of social media. Hunzeker has gone as far as to do a segment on his personal Twitter account called “We’re Listening St. Louis,” where he tweets answers to questions fans have sent to him. Not only does he answer questions, but he also makes big announcements as to the operations of the game day atmosphere. The fans asked for rally towels, the BattleHawks delivered. The fans asked for more vendors roaming the dome, the BattleHawks raised the number from 40 venders to 60 venders. The fans asked for another merchandise cart, the BattleHawks obliged, and all of these new amenities were announced through Hunzeker’s twitter account, not the team’s official account. He said, “it helps us get better by having that open communication.” And despite only being four games into their season, the BattleHawks have figured out ways to get better every single week.

Community engagement has been a huge part of the team since its creation back in August. Since then, they have done over 273 community engagement and grassroots events, something that has been essential in their marketing strategy and ticket sales initiatives. One of these initiatives has been the BattleHawk bar network, a group of bars throughout St. Louis, the surrounding suburbs and even as far as Michigan, that brings the BattleHawks to the fans that can’t make it downtown to the dome for a game. It’s all about creating an atmosphere for fans that brings the game to them and makes it enjoyable. Myer talked about how they don’t have to marry you on the first date. It’s all about getting fans to come back and continue engaging with the team in a variety of ways. 

If you follow St. Louis sports, and maybe even if you don’t, you have probably heard or seen KaKaw, the fan-invented rally cry for the BattleHawks. A fun fact about the cry is that the team never initiated it. This was purely a fan driven movement. “BattleHawks is a name that is aviation centric,” said Hunzeker, “and the fans were like ‘that’s cool, we’re going to make it a bird and we’re going to say KaKaw,’ and then it just grew organically and that’s awesome.” One of the pillars that the front office focuses on is how to become relevant. The creation of KaKaw continues to help the team become relevant because it joins people in the area together and gets them talking about the new team. 

Not only have the BattleHawks become relevant in St. Louis extremely quickly, but they have captured the hearts of many midwesterners and Americans as a whole.  “At our core, we are St. Louis’ team,” said Boyle, “but we of course want to [have] a wide reach.” According to their data, there are BattleHawks fans in 49 of the 50 states already. (North Dakota is the last hold-out, so if you know anyone…) This fandom has grown so quickly due to the unrivaled social media presence that the BattleHawks have created in the XFL. 

The XFL in general has taken a younger, less professional stance in their social media presence. They are known for their memes and instigation of smack talk amongst the teams, something that gets the attention of a younger audience. Data is already showing that the audience for an XFL game is averaging closer to our age, whereas the audience for an NFL game is closer to our parent’s age. The XFL has become a “game of one-up-manship,” said Hunzeker. The teams, in good faith, like to talk smack to each other and find ways to outdo their opponents. 

The BattleHawks social media team has been on-point all the time according to their front office. They excel in relating to fans and getting players excited. The content that is posted isn’t staged and all of the actions are done completely voluntary, something that makes their brand authentic. “Social media is 24/7,” said Boyle, “you have to be paying attention or you could miss an opportunity, and [our content team] hasn’t missed an opportunity.” It’s all about awareness, action, responsiveness and listening to the people.

One of the best examples of the impact the BattleHawks social media has had is the Bud Light Seltzer celebration after their first win. Hunzeker joked that had they known what the players were about to do, they “totally would have tarped the locker room.” Following the game, quarterbacks Nick Fitzgerald (now nicknamed Fitzseltzer) and Taylor Heinicke grabbed some of the Bud Light Seltzer that was left on a table in the locker room and shotgunned them. The content team caught the moment on camera and it quickly went viral. According to Hunzeker, “That video for Bud Light Seltzer has proven to be more, has driven more value than their Post Malone Super Bowl Commercial because it exploded virally and it was so authentic.”

The BattleHawks have quickly filled a hole in the sports culture of St. Louis since August. It’s not too late to jump on the bandwagon and become a fan! This team is St. Louis born and bred and constantly reminds fans how much they appreciate them. Be sure to follow them on social media to stay updated on their push for the playoffs and events they have going on all around St. Louis.

There are 266 days left until the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, and Team USA is slowly being formed athlete by athlete. The year leading up to the games is when these athletes get to realize their dreams of qualifying for the Games, something many of them have been working towards their entire life. 

   Despite the fact that there is still almost a year until the Games kick off in Japan, Team USA already has a number of members who have punched their ticket. This Olympic Games is different than the ones in previous years because next summer will feature the return of baseball and softball, as well as the addition of karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing. These new additions will likely mean that Team USA, already one of the Olympic powerhouses, will only get bigger. 

   Already, three of these new sports have members that will be representing their country in Japan. Brooke Raboutou is an 18-year-old climber from Colorado, and she is the first climber to ever qualify for the Olympics from the U.S. Brooke comes from a family of climbers and has been climbing since the age of two.

   The United States women’s national softball team also qualified back in August after reaching the gold-medal game in the Women’s Softball World Championship. They were guaranteed a spot in the Games with a trip to the final game, win or lose, because their opponent, Japan, had the automatic qualification by being the host nation. It has been two Summer Games since softball was in the Olympics, so the veterans on the team are eager to avenge their silver medal at the hands of Japan in the 2008 Beijing Games. 

   Another new face that will be seen in Tokyo is surfer Kolohe Andino, a California native who qualified during the World Surf League Championship Tour. He is the son of pro surfer Dino Andino and is currently ranked fifth on the tour. Two women and another man will qualify to represent the U.S. in surfing and will qualify this spring. 

   Returning to Team USA for her second Games is road and track cyclist Chloé Dygert Owen. In the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, she won a silver medal in team pursuit and will be competing in both team and individual pursuit in Japan. She recently won gold at the World Championships for both events so she will be a strong competitor next summer. 

   One of the USA’s strongest events in the Summer Olympics is swimming. Three members have already been named to the powerhouse team, all for open water events. Haley Anderson, Ashley Twichell and Jordan Wilimovsky have all made the team. The rest of the potential team members have to wait until June to try to earn their spot on one of the hardest swim teams to make in the world. The Olympic Trials are set to be held in Omaha, Nebraska from June 21–28, 2020. 

   The remaining members of Team USA are from the track and field team. Samantha Achterberg and Amro ElGeziry have both qualified for modern pentathlon. Modern pentathlon is made up of five events: fencing, swimming, equestrian show jumping and a combined event of pistol shooting and cross-country running. This is an event that has a little something for everyone! The final member that has already qualified for Tokyo is triathlete Summer Rappaport. While in college, she was a Division I two-sport athlete competing in both swimming and cross-country. Only after college did she combine the two to become one of the world’s most elite triathletes. 

   Up next is the field hockey team, which looks to qualify for the Games this weekend in a head-to-head, winner-take-all series against the team from India. The winner of the series gets a bid, and the other does not. 

   Team USA will continue to fill up in the months leading up to the Summer Games. You can stay up to date on who’s on the team and learn more about the qualifications for each individual sport at teamusa.org. The countdown to Tokyo is here!

Not only does SLU’s softball team excel on the field during their season in the spring, they find time in their busy schedules to keep their GPA’s up pretty high. Sixth place in the nation high—and this was the third top-ten finish for the Billikens in the last four years.. 

   13 of the 18 (72 percent) members of the squad were named to the Easton All-America Scholar-Athletes list—the most in the Atlantic-10 Conference. 

   This is really no small feat considering the majors that these women are working with, such as Civil Engineering, Financial Analysis, Physical Therapy, Occupational Sciences, and Accounting. 

   Junior Sadie Wise said, “a lot of times we’ll go from practicing together to studying together in the library or Chaifetz so it creates an environment where you want to excel academically.”

   Alyssa Chavez added, “the support we give one another within our team is amazing. We really value our academics and understand that our education comes first. Everyone has bought into our team culture and that’s a very special thing to see.” 

   For athletes, there are a number of people that support each individual in addition to the team—from coaches, teammates and academic advisors—both through the athletic department and advisors from SLU. Coach Christy Connoyer credits softball’s academic advisor, Heather Freehill, with some of her team’s success off the field. Connoyer told SLU athletics, “We appreciate Heather’s assistance with academic arrangements when we travel, her help with obtaining tutors and her overall support of the academic careers of our student-athletes. She truly cares about their time at SLU and the future ahead of them.”

   The team’s 3.653 GPA was the program’s highest in history. Chavez said, “it takes a lot of commitment to succeed both on the field and in the classroom. It’s not easy, but when we all have the same goals it makes achieving our goals possible.” 

   On top of their crazy schedule while at home in the spring, the team travels about 11 times for games throughout the spring semester, missing about two days of class each time. Hearing about how much class they miss and how much time is spent with mandatory softball related activities, it just makes this achievement that much more impressive. 

   Chavez said, “receiving the award of being sixth in the nation for GPA was a great feeling. It was a program best for our team last year and to get recognized for our hard work was awesome! It also motivates us to keep working hard and move up in the rankings this year.” 

   Softball has set the standard for what it means to be a student-athlete at SLU and continues to be nationally ranked year after year. A number six ranking in the polls is an incredible accomplishment, but a number six ranking for GPA is that much more impressive. These women know the importance of getting their education and that one day, softball will end and they have to enter the “real world.” 

   Along with the accomplishments in the classroom last season, graduated senior Kallen Loveless (SLU ‘19) was a part of an award-winning engineering group that won the Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology Most Outstanding Senior Project award in biomedical engineering for last school year. 

   The awards for academics continue to pile up for SLU softball and is something Billiken fans can look forward to this coming year.

 In an unusual midweek matchup, the Billikens volleyball team took on Southeast Missouri State in their first five-set match of the season. Despite the rally to send the match into the fifth set, the Billikens fell short in the shorter frame for the 3-2 loss to the Redhawks. With the loss, SLU fell to 6-4 on the year, going 5-2 in the Pavillion in Chaifetz Arena. 

   The Billikens dropped the first set in a close 25-23 contest that saw eleven ties and six lead changes between the two squads. SEMO was able to score the last two points of the set from tied at 23 to 25 for the win. After losing the first set, the Billikens rallied to take the second in a more commanding fashion, 25-18. 

   Much like the second set for the Billikens, the Redhawks took the lead early on in the set and maintained it throughout for the 25-16 win. The Billikens were now in a hole and had to come back from being down 2-1 in the match. 

   The comeback was enacted for the Bills and they fought tooth and nail to squeak out the 25-23 to force a fifth set in the match. Seniors Sien Gallop and Lauren Mershon recorded back-to-back kills to give the Bills a lead they were able to hold on to. 

   The comeback mentality didn’t carry over for the Billikens into the fifth set because SEMO jumped out to a seven-point lead. SLU was able to bring the game back within striking distance, but the Redhawks held onto the lead, and eventually the match. 

   In the match Gallop lead the Billikens with 24 kills and junior Maya Taylor had a double-double with 18 kills and 11 digs. Sophomore Emily Imo had a game-high 18 digs to add to her season totals. 

   This weekend, the Billikens head north to Milwaukee, Wis. for the Marquette Invitational. They will face off with host, eighth ranked Marquette, Green Bay and Northern Iowa.

  It has been a commonly known fact that in the United States, football is king. It’s the college sport that brings in the most revenue, and the NFL is highest grossing professional sports organization. Yet, despite popular thought, money wasn’t the deciding factor in Kent State University’s recent decision to end a neutral site field hockey match between Temple University and the University of Maine. Kent State’s administration decided that a daytime fireworks show prior to the kickoff of a football game was more important than the completion of a Division I Field Hockey game that was headed into double overtime. 

   On September 7, Temple and Maine were playing a neutral site game at Kent State’s field when the match went scoreless into overtime. After the first overtime, the game remained scoreless, resulting in a second, 10-minute period of 7v7 play (field hockey is regularly played with 11 players to a side). Prior to the start of the second overtime, around 10:30am, officials from Kent State’s athletics department came onto the field and told the teams that their game had to end due to the home opener football game that was set to kickoff at noon. They weren’t just kicking them off the field for the football game, but for the fireworks display that was supposed to take place right before the game, on the football field adjacent to the hockey field. 

   According to the statement released by the National Field Hockey Coaches’ Association on September 9, “while the coaches were made aware of the 10:30 a.m. stoppage of play via a May 2019 email, Kent State University failed to communicate the steps that would be taken should the 10:30 a.m. hard stop be reached.” Despite the email agreement, the NFHCA also discovered that in the game contract, there was no mention of the hard stop time, nor any contingency plans for what would happen if the time was reached. The Kent State officials offered to complete the game at 5:30 p.m. following the completion of the football game, but due to Temple’s travel plans, this was impossible. Because the game was never completed, it was declared a “no contest” and will not be counted on either team’s overall record. They played 70 minutes of a game that will not be counted. 

   Right after the decision, the University of Maine field hockey team tweeted about the event, gaining a lot of attention within the field hockey world and eventually more well known news outlets, including SportsCenter. 

   This story was brought to my attention through the initial tweet from UMaine, and I was immediately devastated by the way Kent State administration handled the entire situation. I, myself, am a member of SLU’s Division I Field Hockey team so this hits the nail on the head for me. I can immediately put myself in the shoes of all of the girls that were on the field when they were told by another school’s athletic department that all of the hard work they put in every day, all of the sacrifices they make for their themselves, their teammates and their school are irrelevant. This entire issue goes beyond the “revenue sports” argument because the two sports are played on completely different fields, and the only reason the game was cancelled was due to a pre-game festivity, not an actual contest. 

   The Kent State administration effectively told over 50 women that a display of daytime fireworks was more important than the completion of their game.

   USA Field Hockey released a statement on September 10 that said, “the abrupt cancellation of [the game] has caused great concern within our sport… [and we] will continue to support the idea that all student-athletes have equal access to the right to compete.” 

   The right to compete. When you step onto a field in a uniform with your school written across your chest, a school that you have given hours of sweat, passion, heart and tears for, you have the right to finish the game. Fireworks are and should never be more important than a Division I contest – male or female. 

   It not only infuriates me, but hurts me to see that 47 years after Title IX was passed, women still have to fight for the same fair treatment as men in sports. When SportsCenter picked up this story, I was excited to see that it would get the national attention it deserves, hoping it would bring attention to the fact that this continues to be an issue. I made the mistake of reading the comments on the post because much of what I saw were people responding, “field hockey got what it deserved,” or, “no one cares about field hockey.”

   No one cares about field hockey? How about the teams of young girls I have been honored to coach throughout the years who are empowered through sport; the men and women who get to represent their country in the Olympics because, yes, the United States does in fact have a men’s national team in field hockey; the parents who sacrifice their weekends, free time and money for their children who are chasing their dreams and traveling across the country to play in tournaments; the young women who get to realize their greatest goal of competing for their university and the teams that become more like families. 

   The field hockey community in the USA is a very tight knit group and will continue to fight until this heinous decision is rectified, but this goes beyond field hockey. We have to continue to fight for the equal right to compete.