Three-Time All-American Alyssa Munlyn Ready for Senior Season Debut

Alyssa Munlyn is modest when discussing the accolades accumulated throughout her Mizzou volleyball career: SEC Freshman of the Year, multiple All-SEC team mentions, dean’s lists and academic awards, to name a few. But there’s one distinct “honor.” It’s one Munlyn has collected three consecutive seasons and one she hopes to avenge heading into her senior year this fall.

All-America Honorable Mention.

“Getting that ‘honorable mention’ makes me fiery inside,” Munlyn says. “It makes me want to push myself even harder.”

That internal inferno should terrify opposing SEC squads heading into her 2018 campaign, which begins Aug. 24 at the James Madison Invitational in Harrisonburg, Virginia, against Delaware State.

Munlyn burst onto the scene her freshman year, breaking single-season records for blocks (149) and block assists (124). The soaring middle blocker factored mightily on Mizzou’s 2016 SEC Championship team that went 27-6 (16-2 SEC). In 2017, she finished second in the SEC in blocks (189) and blocks per set (1.44). And still, you still might say the best is yet to come.

The daughter of James Munlyn and Rebecca Foster Munlyn, both Georgia Tech basketball alumni, Alyssa juggled basketball and volleyball until her senior year at North Gwinnett High School in Suwanee, Georgia. Although she came by her basketball skills naturally, volleyball was a labor of love. “It took a little longer for me to catch on, and it didn’t come to me as easily as basketball,” says Munlyn, whose 2014 high school volleyball team finished state runner up in Georgia. “I loved volleyball all along, don’t get me wrong. But it was good for me to have those moments to step back, learn and work harder. Some people say, ‘You were born a volleyball player.’ That’s just not true.”

Mizzou, the first big-time school to recruit Munlyn, noticed her work ethic and raw talent. Her high school coaches appreciated the program’s consistency, and endorsed Mizzou. Off the court, Munlyn leads with her heart. A communications major with a minor in human development and family studies, she hopes to pursue a career helping inner-city youth and young athletes. Munlyn and fellow Mizzou student-athletes spent time this summer in Haiti with Soles4Souls, a charity organization that collects and redistributes shoes to people in need. The trip took Tigers to schools and orphanages, where they fit youngsters for shoes and bonded for life.

“I do my best to spread love and laughter,” Munlyn says. “I try to be someone who can always put light in the situation, and someone you can see God’s work through.”

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And it may be further still from familiar Audrey J. Walton Track on the Mizzou campus.

And yet, once again, the results are still the same. Running internationally for the first time this July, Schweizer won her first international race across the pond in Kortrijk, Belgium, setting another personal best in the 1,500-meter at 4:06.77 in the process. Only one week later she faced a much tougher international challenge, one that featured some familiar American faces.

On a beautiful Belgium summer evening, Schweizer walked from the staging area onto the track for the women’s 5K event. She walked along with the rest of the field, which included some of the best in the world, such as fellow Iowan and Olympian Shelby Houlihan, as well as Olympian Molly Huddle and Olympic medalist Shalane Flanagan, who was on hand to pace Houlihan in her attempt to break the American 5K record.

But Schweizer had an interesting new uniform on this evening. No longer wearing the familiar black and yellow of Mizzou, she now wore the uniform of The Bowerman Track Club, her new professional team, joining track giants like Flanagan and Houlihan. The subtle sign of different colors marked a new chapter in Schweizer’s career, ending months of anticipation and some nerves in deciding which pro team she’d run for.

“Excited to finally announce that I have signed with Nike and the Bowerman Track Club! Can’t wait to see what the future holds,” Schweizer said. Adding after the race, “I’m really excited to start training with the Bowerman team. They have a really good framework going and I can’t wait to be a part of it!”

A large, enthusiastic crowd settled in for the women’s 5K, excited to see the international field. They were not disappointed. Toeing the line, Schweizer, now an experienced veteran of big races, wore a calm yet focused stare, awaiting the gun. Karissa’s mother, Kathy, stood nervously along the fence. Even though she too had become a veteran of her daughter’s big races, there’s always a few nerves at times like these. Holding her phone tight to her ear, Kathy would nervously give a play by play of her daughter’s race to friends, family and former teammates via a conference call.

From the start, the race unfolded predictably as Houlihan and her pacers broke from the field in the first 200 meters. Schweizer settled into the middle of the chase pack, staying just off the rail and out of trouble. Several laps in, a smaller chase group formed, including Schweizer, Huddle and Emily Sisson, the former NCAA National Champion. Up front, Houlihan was competing against the clock; meanwhile a second, more competitive race battled on behind her.

With one lap remaining, Houlihan was on pace to break the record, while the battle for second was heating up and would be between Huddle and Schweizer. With 200 meters to go, Houlihan headlong into her famous finishing kick — Huddle and Schweizer were busy showing off ferocious kicks of their own.

As the crowd rose to its feet, they roared in approval for the finishing efforts they were witnessing: Houlihan’s record-breaking performance and the battle between Huddle and Schweizer, who finished second and third respectively. After the race, Schweizer was quite pleased and proud of her third-place finish, setting yet another big personal 5K best in 15:02.44.

A satisfied Schweizer reflected on her race and European tour, not forgetting her college coach, Mizzou’s Marc Burns, who helped her get to this elite level. “I was very happy with the race,” she says. “It’s been a stressful week with everything going on and I was glad I was able to clear my mind and have a good race! The whole goal for going to Europe was the set myself up for a fast 5K, and Coach Burns put me in the best position for that.”

It appears no matter where Karissa Schweizer races, and for whatever team she runs, the results are and success seem to certainly follow.

Photos by Jim Kirby

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Italian Basketball Champion Laurence Bowers Continues Youth Basketball Tradition

Laurence Bowers has always been a renaissance man. A portrait artist and a singer — his college vocal group once opened for fellow Mizzou alumnus Kareem Rush who performed at Columbia’s Blue Note in 2011 — Bowers also plays piano, runs a youth basketball foundation and delivers motivational speeches at various engagements throughout the year. So perhaps it’s appropriate that his professional basketball career took him to the historic era’s cradle in Italy where he plays for Pallacanestro Trieste, the reigning champions of Lega Basket Serie A.

As one might expect of a gentleman with varied interests, Bowers has savored his time in Europe like an aromatic plate of cappellacci (pumpkin-stuffed pasta) in Bolognese sauce — his favorite Italian dish. “It’s great the paths you cross playing basketball and what the sport allows you to see,” says Bowers, whose Mizzou days spanned 2008–13. “Basketball fans in Italy are amazing and crazy and extremely passionate. They’ll even try to fight each other during games.”

Bowers has parleyed his international success into Camp Bowers, a youth basketball clinic hosted by Rock Bridge High School in Columbia. Bowers started the camp, now in its fourth year, as a way to “pay it forward” in honor of mentors who helped him as a youngster growing up in Memphis, Tennessee. Camp Bowers runs July 9–11. Campers receive an official basketball and T-shirt, in addition to top-notch instruction from Mizzou’s runner up in career blocked shots (behind Arthur Johnson). Other past and present Missouri Tigers will be in attendance.

“The thing I’m most proud of was that I was able to get my master’s degree [in education] in five years,” says Bowers, MU basketball’s only scholarship player to earn a graduate degree during his NCAA career. “I was a pretty good student, but I had a good woman behind me.”

Bowers means his wife Feven whom he met in 2009 at The Field House, the popular college hangout in Columbia. The couple married in 2015 and welcomed daughter Fiyori in January 2017. “Becoming a husband and a father is motivating,” says Bowers, who proposed to Feven in 2013 at half-court of Mizzou Arena. “You want to do well for yourself so you can live a decent, comfortable life. But when you add the responsibility of providing for your wife and your daughter, it’s like taking a 5-hour Energy drink. I’m always thinking, I’ve got to do better. I’ve got to push myself. I’ve got to go harder.”

Bowers has continued his work for local charities during his five-year international career (two seasons in Israel, three in Italy). Fans might remember the Carroll and Bowers Alumni Game, with proceeds going to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Columbia and Granny’s House. And black-and-gold faithful certainly remember Bowers’ graduating class — a star-studded group including Kim English and Marcus Denmon — that finished with 107 career wins, the most of any class in Mizzou history.

“I love Mizzou,” Bowers says. “It was the best five years of my life besides having my daughter. I wish I could still play for Mizzou and get paid the money I make now.”

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Steve Bieser can speak intelligently about any number of topics, but the only subject Missouri’s second-year baseball coach has trouble opening up about is Steve Bieser. It doesn’t come naturally to him to bring up the road he’s traveled — it’s one not many have taken. A native of St. Genevieve, Missouri, he went from a junior college baseball standout to the 32nd-round MLB draft pick of the Philadelphia Phillies, the 818th player selected in 1989. He went from career minor leaguer to a player who finally saw action in 60 games at the major-league level primarily as a catcher and an outfielder, a height that few prospects drafted in his position reach.

As a coach, Bieser went from the high school level to an assistant and then head skipper at Southeast Missouri State. Then in June 2016, he became the 14th coach in the history of the Missouri baseball program.
He’d rather talk about something else, though. But he’s getting a little better at it.

“I’ve had (former players) tell me they never heard me once talking about my playing days,” Bieser says. “I would never share as much because I didn’t want to make it about me. I don’t really look at that as ‘Steve Bieser made it.’ I look at it as just a blessing. I was given an opportunity, and the only thing I controlled was being ready for that opportunity. I wasn’t really given anything. But I wasn’t going to quit, wasn’t going to let anybody tell me that something can’t be done. I was going to keep working hard and believe that good things happen to good people.”

As he finishes his second year leading the Tigers, Bieser continues to instill his values into the program. His outlook encompasses concepts as complicated as tracking launch angle, exit velocity and pitch recognition for Missouri’s hitters and as simple as working hard, staying humble and getting his athletes to believe they’re capable of eventually getting to the College World Series in Omaha, where the Tigers haven’t been since 1964.

But that’s getting a little too far ahead. At the beginning of the season, Bieser and his staff had more pressing matters. New pitching coach Fred Corral had to figure out the right combination of arms to replace the quality innings recorded by drafted aces Tanner Houck and Cole Bartlett. Bieser has always run his team’s offensive strategy, but he had to take on more day-to-day hitting-coach responsibilities after former assistant Dillon Lawson left to work for the World Series champion Houston Astros.

It’s no wonder then that Bieser’s desk is uncharacteristically cluttered. “Last year, when you get the job, you hit the ground running,” he says. “And it doesn’t feel like I’ve come out of a sprint yet.”

Last year, Missouri was 2-5 in one-run games in SEC play during a season in which it went 36-23 overall and 14–16 in the league. Bieser points to the series against national powerhouse Florida — three one-run losses — as an indication of how big a difference the little things can make. A couple more one-run wins could have put the Tigers in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012. “We were just as good as (Florida) on the mound, but they were a little better offensively, just from execution,” Bieser says. “Not from standing in the box and driving the baseball, but they executed. As our program continues to evolve, those are the things we have to be able to do: win one-run ball games against really good clubs.”

Even though he considers himself old-school, Bieser has been quick to incorporate the wave of analytics that has swept the sport. The players are eager to know their measurables and how their games can improve, Bieser says, but he also has to be wary of giving his hitters too much to think about during at-bats. For example, if you point out how often a hitter is swinging at pitches out of the zone, he may become too cautious and start taking pitches he should be driving. “It’s what information do you share and what information do you use to help yourself manage a game?” Bieser says. “It’s really nice when your gut is the same feeling as what the numbers back up.”

It all comes back to the players believing in the plan, presented to them by a coach who has plotted out his own meticulous path to uncommon success. “This group has really bought in,” Bieser says. “It’s probably been one of the best groups I’ve ever coached as far as showing up daily with a focus and intent, getting locked in and giving it their all every single day. That’s what has been so pleasing about Year 2. And to have that so quick, that’s saying something 
about our guys.”

This weekend, the Tigers will close out their season with a series against Tennessee, with TJ Sikkema, Michael Plassmeyer and Tyler LaPlante taking the mound in their last regular-season starts. To qualify for the SEC Tournament and strengthen their resumé for the NCAA Tournament, they’ll need to show up.

Photos courtesy of Mizzou Athletics

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When Hayden Buckley saw his ball land softly on the green a few feet from the hole, he had an inkling he might be on his way to a special round. Buckley called the shot, his second stroke of the second round of the Princeville Makai Invitational in October, “a complete accident.” The pin was tucked in a difficult spot, so Buckley aimed for the more accessible center of the green. The slightly off-target shot set him up for a birdie on the opening hole.

The birdies continued to pile up, and by the time he stepped to the tee at the par-5 18th hole, Buckley was on the verge of a career round. He was nine under par, well on his way to bettering the career-best round of 64 he had posted just a couple of weeks earlier. Buckley knocked his second shot on the green, leaving himself about 30 feet for eagle. Make it and he would shoot 61, the lowest round in Missouri program history.

That Buckley was even on the team would have seemed unlikely five years ago. He grew up splitting his time between the diamond and the course, not fully committing to golf until midway through high school. A native of Tupelo, Mississippi, he dreamed of teeing it up for Mississippi or Mississippi State — his father played baseball for the Rebels — but even after he helped lead Tupelo High to three straight state championships, was named all-state four consecutive years and “begged them to let me walk on,” neither school showed interest.

The home-state schools weren’t alone. Rice was the only Division I school that had offered Buckley. But Chris Harder, the head professional at Tupelo Country Club, reached out to Missouri coach Mark Leroux. Harder had played for Leroux when Leroux was the coach at Austin Peay, and Harder beseeched his former coach to take a chance on Buckley. Leroux acquiesced, inviting Buckley on an official visit before ever watching him play. He eventually offered him a spot on the roster.

Upon committing to Missouri, Buckley vowed not to forget how he had been snubbed by the in-state schools. “From that day, I just had to work a little bit harder than everybody,” he says. “I had to stay longer, I had to do more things at home over Christmas break or summer, I had to do that much more to get to where I wanted to be and to get to where I felt I needed to be for the team.”

That approach has led to slow but steady improvement throughout Buckley’s college career — until this season. After consistently contributing but never winning an event during his first three years as a Tiger, Buckley, a senior, has suddenly become dominant. In Missouri’s first tournament of the fall, the 15-team Turning Stone-Tiger Invitational in Verona, New York, Buckley notched his first victory. Two tournaments later, at the Bank of Tennessee Invitational, he picked up his second victory and tied the lowest 54-hole total in school history by shooting 17 under par. Two weeks later came the Makai Invitational.

Although Buckley didn’t realize the eagle putt on 18 was for the school record, he knew he was playing well, and he knew he didn’t yet have an eagle on the scorecard. He studied the line, stepped up to the ball and holed the putt. Only after his teammates went crazy did Buckley realize he had made program history. At 19 under par, he also broke the 54-hole scoring record he had tied in Tennessee while finishing second individually.

As the spring season approached, Buckley ranked second in the NCAA in average score to par, per GolfStat.com. He shot par or better in 11 of 12 rounds. And he is showing no signs of slowing down. After a more than two-month break from tournament play since the Makai Invitational, Buckley overcame a six-stroke deficit after three rounds at the New Year’s Invitational in St. Petersburg, Florida, in early January, ultimately winning in a playoff. It marked the second consecutive year he has won the amateur event. And in February at Mizzou’s first event of the spring season, Buckley birdied seven of his last 12 holes to fire a final-round 64 and claim individual honors at the Sun Trust Gator Invitational in Gainesville, Florida.

Leroux says Buckley has already cemented himself among the best two or three golfers in school history. So how did an unrecruited high school player get to this point? Leroux and Harder both credit Buckley’s work ethic, which they say is driven by his competitiveness.

“Hayden is so good because of what Hayden has done,” Leroux says. “He made himself better by 
taking every opportunity and resource that was available to him.”

And don’t be fooled by the demeanor. “His desire to win, it’s exceptional,” Harder says. “He’s the nicest kid, but he will want to rip your head off. He’ll quietly want to destroy you, but he’ll look right at you and smile with a nice Southern personality.”

Buckley believes his breakout season has resulted not from an adjustment to his swing or approach, but from increased maturity and confidence that has allowed him to learn how to fight through adversity. “If you look at rankings and you look at scores and you look at all the statistics, things have changed drastically, but not much has changed physically,” Buckley says.
While his swing may not have changed from last season, one thing has: his post-graduate plans. Buckley says he was initially on the fence about committing to the grueling process of trying to qualify for the PGA Tour. But after his fall success, Buckley says he will set aside at least five years to chase his dream of playing professionally.

Harder, who earned his own PGA Tour card after graduating from Austin Peay, believes Buckley has a chance to carve out a career as a tour professional. “He just keeps getting better and better and better and better,” Harder says. “There’s nothing to tell me that it would slow down. It can take him as far as he wants.”

Photos by Emil Lippe

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Megan Cunningham’s eyes were open, but she could only see black.  Just moments before, she was sitting in the backseat of her parents’ truck as they began the trek to Wyoming for an annual camping trip. It was July 2015.

The Cunninghams zipped down Interstate 70 in the dead of night, pulling a new camper behind the vehicle as it rocked side to side in the wind.

Megan remembers her father yelling to slow down, then feeling the truck screech to a halt as her mom slammed on the brakes. When Megan looked out the window, she saw the camper swing around as the truck flipped perpendicular to the highway. The camper crashed into the side of the truck; they rolled over five times. Megan looked around for something, anything. She was lost in a sea of black, and that’s the last thing she remembers.

The Mizzou cross-country runner woke up in a hospital emergency room to the news that her skull was fractured in more than 20 places. Her neck was broken in four places, and she had bleeding in her brain.

“I was really confused,” she says. “I remember them saying I needed stitches and getting scared because I’m terrified of needles, but they’d already done the stitches and I hadn’t felt a thing. And they needed to cut my clothes off, and I worried about what I was wearing.”

Her mother had cuts and bruises, but her dad suffered injuries similar to her own. While Megan would have surgery on her neck and begin a long road to recovery, her dad was a quadriplegic.

The magnitude of her recovery, and her father’s situation, were incomprehensible. After Cunningham underwent neck surgery, her doctor recommended she take a semester off from school, but doing so meant she would lose the scholarships that allowed her to attend Mizzou. She enrolled mostly in online classes so she could work at her own pace but attended science courses, her most difficult subject.

Cunningham wasn’t permitted to exercise for five months, but she promised herself she’d go to cross country practices every day. She could hardly walk from her car to the track without feeling a splitting pain. “I didn’t think I’d ever run at the collegiate level again,” she says. “I thought I’d get back into running so I could go for a hobby jog. There wasn’t a lot to do when the girls would go run, so I would slowly walk around, and I eventually found myself able to walk four or five miles to watch them run.”

Her head throbbed from migraines, and her neck was sore, but Cunningham continued walking. Just as cross country had been, walking became her outlet. In January 2016, she was cleared to jog again.

“I thought it would come back naturally, but I felt as stable as a newborn deer,” Cunningham says. “I had to work with Coach [Marc] Burns and learn to trust my own judgment about what was good for me and my body. As a cross-country coach, this isn’t an injury you’re really exposed to. You know guidelines from coming back from a fracture, but not a skull and neck injury. We kept everything open.”

Despite suffering from migraines and dizziness, Cunningham continued to train. It was her goal to get back running with her “girls.” During the 2015-16 winter season, she asked her coach if she could compete in Mizzou’s home indoor track meet to show her family how far she’d come. It had only been seven months since the accident, and Cunningham could barely run. But she finished — 3,000 meters to be exact, and in 10 minutes, 34.85 seconds. She didn’t stop smiling for days.

“I was so glad to be running again,” she says. “That’s all that mattered.”

Cunningham raced again in January 2017, and by the end of her outdoor season, she was recording some of her fastest times ever, including a personal best in the 5,000 meters. She’s only improved, pushing herself more than she ever had.

At the beginning of the 2017-18 season, her redshirt senior year, Cunningham set some lofty goals for herself. In cross country, it was to be all-region, which she accomplished with a 12th-place finish. But in February, she dominated, taking first place at the SEC Indoor Track & Field Championships in the women’s 5,000-meter run.

This spring, in outdoor, her goal is to make the national championship.

With every step she takes, Cunningham isn’t only running for herself — she’s running for her dad. He can’t travel to her meets, so her teammates make sure to FaceTime him during her races so he doesn’t have to miss them. “It’s as much for me as it is for my dad,” she says. “I wanted to take things one day at a time, do better than I’d done before. I wanted to help my team. On top of that, I view the fact that I’m still running as a huge comeback.”

Photos by Jeff Curry (courtesy of Mizzou Athletics) and Emil Lippe

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Lauren Aldridge has already heard all of your KU jokes. She knows that people say the only good thing to come out of Lawrence is I-70, and that they have plenty of ideas about what KU really stands for. She’s heard every joke and every line since she stepped onto Mizzou’s campus in the spring of 2016.

But for the Kansas transfer, it’s time to get serious. After sitting out last season per NCAA transfer rules, Aldridge, a 5-foot-7 point guard, is at long last eligible to play for the black and gold. “One of the most incredible things is being able to compete with people you love, and love playing for and with,” Aldridge says. “After not being on the court last year, I’ve been able to focus on creating those deeper relationships with my teammates. I’m excited to get back on the court with them.”

As a sophomore at Kansas in 2015-16, Aldridge started all 31 games and led the Jayhawks in scoring, averaging 11.1 points per game. She also led the team in field goals, three-pointers, assists and minutes. And although she won’t go into detail about why she transferred, she calls it a “prayerful” decision.

What she does say is that she was drawn by the opportunity to learn from Coach Robin Pingeton, who recruited her at Marshfield (Mo.) High School. In the time since Aldridge arrived on campus, Pingeton has risen from basketball coach to life coach. The relationship is made even more significant because the basketball court isn’t the only court in Aldridge’s life. She’s a first-year law school student, and, early in the semester she was struggling. She sought out Pingeton.

“I went into her all teary-eyed and said, ‘I don’t know what to do, this is so stressful,’” Aldridge says. “She took a minute to calm me down, create a game plan and ask me about how life is outside of law school. I walked away thinking this is such an opportunity. What coach would let one of her players go to law school and play basketball at the same time?”

Aldridge began thinking about law school when she learned she was on track to graduate from Mizzou in three years. And because she wasn’t allowed to travel she had more time to devote to her academic work. Aldridge majored in political science and graduated summa cum laude in May. She’s no stranger to studying, but law school is a different beast altogether. If there’s a player who can handle it, Pingeton knows it’s Aldridge.

“You know you have someone special when they can balance all that,” Pingeton says. “That first year of law school, that’s probably the toughest year out of any of them, and she’s done a great job balancing it. On the court, I think she’s going to be a great addition for us. She gives us an anchor at that point guard position; she’s a quarterback, a great facilitator and has a great basketball IQ.”

When Aldridge met with Pingeton that first week, she left feeling as though the struggle was not only hers, but the team’s. She spends her early mornings reading dozens of pages for her torts class and late nights writing papers, but her teammates make sure she’s not in it alone. They’ve offered to bring her lunch, help quiz her and provide moral support when she feels like she’s losing her focus. “They embrace the challenge,” Aldridge says. “It makes it so fun to be a part of and rewarding at the end of the day. You’re not just getting a W in the win column or just the accolades at the end of the year. It’s your family.”

She’s also found family in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes — she helped start a chapter at Kansas and was pleased to find such a large community involved in the organization at Mizzou, even leading a small group with some of her teammates. And when the stress starts to build, Aldridge has another outlet: turkey hunting. She comes from a hunting family and learned the art from her brother, Tyler. He’s the one who initiates the wild turkey call, who places the gun in his sister’s hands and who tells her when to shoot.

“We get to have life conversations,” Aldridge says. “During the season, I don’t get much time to connect with him. It’s always in the spring, so that’s my time to go home and hang out with him. It’s a great adrenaline rush.” In the meantime, Aldridge will continue to endure jokes from her teammates about how coming to Mizzou means she finally “saw the light.” It’s all been worth it. When she arrived at Mizzou, a feeling consumed her. She knows that feeling will only intensify as she settles into the season. It’s the feeling that she’s right where she’s supposed to be. The feeling of being home.

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Simone Esters does the same thing. Every time.

She wipes her hands, then she wipes her feet. It’s a sign that Esters is about to compete. Before stepping into any competitive routine, she ritualistically rubs her palms and soles like she’s making sure they’re still there. The routine is a way for Esters to get comfortable in a tense environment that’s never really stopped making her anxious. “I hate having attention on me,” Esters says. “It’s my biggest pet peeve.”

The thing is, Esters is amazing when the attention is on her. She’s one of the best baton twirlers in the world, was crowned “Miss Majorette of America” twice, and is a feature twirler for Marching Mizzou. “Simone is very athletic and extremely graceful, so many of her moves look effortless,” Stacey Emch, her lifelong twirling coach, says. “Her style is beautiful, and we enhance them with surprise elements. The result is a stunning twirler that people love to watch.”

As a kindergartener in her hometown of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, Esters picked up a baton for the very first time. And as she enters her sophomore year of college at MU, she’s still holding on. If you ask her, she doesn’t remember why she began twirling. But she remembers why she kept going — it was after Emch told her, “If you keep practicing, you’ll get to win a trophy some day.” Today, the twirler has more trophies than her hands can count.

But that doesn’t mean she’s happy.

“To be completely honest, I’m to the point where if I wasn’t good at it, I probably wouldn’t stick with it,” Esters says. “Sometimes there are days I don’t want to do it. I feel like that’s with any athlete at this level — I do it because I know I have the ability to be successful.”

Preparing for nationals or worlds, Esters does the same as any elite athlete would: “a combination of strength, endurance, and working to build mentally and physically better each practice. She has lessons on a daily basis, as well as her own practice,” Emch says.

But it’s a common myth that the best athletes in the world love what they do. Maybe an athlete’s path to competition began with an innocent intrigue and love for their sport, like it did with Esters. But often times, as one ascends to a certain level of expertise, the audience’s expectations (for better or worse) increase as well. It’s no different for Esters, who says this shift changed her approach to twirling forever.

“It’s a different mindset when you’re so nervous because you know you have the chance to win it all and you’re not just having fun. I love twirling, but I wouldn’t call it a hobby that I do on the side. It’s not like, ‘Oh, if I win, that would be awesome,” Esters says.

“You don’t just do it. You do it to win.”

If you’re looking for Simone’s inspiration to succeed, look no further than her parents, Julie Forndael and Jeff Esters, who played basketball and football, respectively, at the University of Pittsburgh. Esters says her upbringing created the goal-oriented, focused and driven individual she’s become. But the success that came as a result of these traits also provided an unpredictable consequence.

“After I won the national title, I didn’t really feel like I loved it as much because I was trying to prove myself to others,” she says. If Esters had a drop during a routine, people asked her what was wrong — if she wasn’t perfect, something wasn’t right.

This is not right, Esters thought. It was almost as if people forgot she was a human with the most human trait of all: making mistakes. In the way a child will never view Christmas the same once finding out Santa Claus isn’t real, Esters would never approach twirling with the same innocence and unconditional love as she once did. It was then that she accepted her competitive drive is permanently a part of her, but her love for twirling is not.

She admits that she wouldn’t be twirling today if it weren’t for what happened last July:

0.5.

Five-tenths of a point. Simone Esters won’t forget that number, at least not anytime soon. It’s the number that won’t let her leave competitive twirling. It’s also the amount of points that kept her from a collegiate national championship this summer. Esters earned the second-highest point total among 80 of the country’s best twirlers, and that’s exactly the problem: she finished in second place.

“It just means I was that close. It’s a mindset,” Esters says.

“You don’t just do it, you do it to win.”

Esters may be ready to retire from competitive twirling, but her competitive spirit isn’t. It’s this ingrained drive that won’t let her leave without being on top. “I’m happy with the accomplishments I’ve achieved, but I’m still goal orientated,” Esters says. “There’s still one thing I want to cross off my list, and I’m going to make it happen.”

This is the internal battle that swarms inside Esters: she wants to stop competing, but she wants to finish as the best even more. It’s a personal struggle that she and the people around her know all too well — it’s just a part of who she is.

“Simone will tell you no matter how many times she competes or performs, the nerves and pressure to do her best are always there,” Emch says.

“I’ve set goals for myself in my twirling career, and once I achieve them, I’m done,” Esters adds. “After that, who knows? There’s nothing else for me to accomplish. This is the last thing I have to cross off my list, then I’m done.”

Esters already knows how she’ll turn her final dream into reality. It’s a simple and effective approach she’s taken her entire twirling career: set a goal and work hard until you get there. She’s taken this same approach outside of twirling, and it’s worked. On top of morphing herself into one of the best twirling talents in the country, she’s excelled academically, skipping the first grade getting into the school of her choice, the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and becoming a Walter Williams Scholar.

“Twirling has done so much for me, but making the decision to come to MU was based solely on academics. A degree from the journalism school, that’s what’s really going to take me places in life,” she says.

Mizzou had always been on her mind, but things didn’t really change until Esters made the 10-hour trip from Pennsylvania to attend the Southeastern Conference school. “I have a few friends from high school, but twirling was what I wanted to do. It was the goal for myself,” Esters says — a thorough social life isn’t necessarily available to a child prodigy who spends her time perfecting a single craft.  “After school, I had gymnastics and dance practice, and it was hard to make friends with my schedule. For me to come to school and have a normal experience, it’s something that I knew I wanted in college.”

An active member of Alpha Chi Omega and twirler for Marching Mizzou — this is the experience Esters has wanted from the moment she stepped in Columbia. And as a feature twirler on game day, she’s still doing some of the same tricks, but this time for a different and more fulfilling reason.

“I feel like I’m actually twirling for myself again,” Esters says, smiling. “There’s no competition, and it’s just fun. Everyone’s cheering so loud, everyone is so passionate, and everyone loves Mizzou.”

And that’s why Esters loves MU — not only because it’s given her the ability to approach life with the same successful mindset, but also because it’s given her a new perspective on the sport she’s worked toward her entire life. Twirling with Marching Mizzou takes away the forces that have pressured her into leaving competitive twirling. Even if it’s just for a moment, it’s helped her forget that Santa Claus isn’t real.

“It just feels like Columbia is my home now. It’s awesome.”

This doesn’t mean Esters is done with twirling. Not by a long shot.

Although her days of competing are almost over, Esters is already giving back to the sport that’s provided her with a template for success. “I teach six girls back in my hometown,” Esters says. “This year was our first nationals, and that was a really cool experience for me, putting myself in a different position and watching.”

“They all look up to her,” says Emch, who allows Esters to teach in her studio. “Simone is going to be a great coach. She is patient and persistent with them, encouraging, and always pushing just a bit harder. She’s a great role model for young children because she’s humble and honest. I think she’s ready to start judging and coaching more soon.”

Esters thinks she’s ready too. “I feel like that was the beginning of my transition,” she says. “I was more excited and nervous for them than I ever was for myself.”

She may be looking to leave competitive twirling, but Esters isn’t leaving behind what made her great. Simone Esters is going to do what she’s done her entire life: set a goal and work hard until that goal is achieved. Because “You don’t just do it, you do it to win.”

Photos by Nick Mebruer

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Natasha Kaiser-Brown doesn’t show off the silver medal she earned as part of the 4×400-meter relay during the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics.

Even if she wanted to, though, she’d have to reclaim it from her hometown.

When Brown, who returned to her alma mater as an associate head track coach last August, qualified for the 1992 Olympics, her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, helped raise money to send her mother and father overseas to watch her race.

Brown came back with the silver medal and, as a token of appreciation to the town that raised her, donated the medal to Des Moines.

“It doesn’t belong to her. It’s not something we have,” says her husband, Brian Brown, an assistant athletic director at Missouri. “She can’t even take it anywhere to show it off.” It’s just not in Brown’s character to broadcast her own accomplishments. If you ask for her life story, she’ll fill in the details, but she’s not rattling off her resume unprompted.

If she were, you’d know that she was an Olympian in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996; a silver- and gold-medal winner at the world championships; a member of 16 U.S. national teams; a six-time All-American during her collegiate career at Missouri; and a woman who held eight indoor and outdoor school records at Mizzou — she still holds the times for the indoor and outdoor 400-meter dash.

It’s just not like her to talk herself up. She learned that from her father.

“No showboating, no bragging, no flip comments, no fingers in the air when you cross the finish line,” Natasha Brown says. “What I learned early on was to take any medals I had, tuck them in a shoebox and put them away. To be honest, I had a really hard time trying to remember stuff that happened, because I didn’t celebrate, so it didn’t come to my mind as easily.

“I really almost have to go back and Google it to remember it.”

Brown served as an assistant coach at Missouri previously (1993-2000), during the height of her international career. That was before she and Brian went to Drake University in Des Moines, where she served as both the women’s and men’s head track and field coach.

When she speaks to the seven women she coaches at Mizzou, it gives them added incentive to heed her words; she’s been there and done that — even if she needs a little prodding, sometimes, to revisit her illustrious past.

“Any place that the athletes she coaches could dream of getting to, she’s been there. If it happened in track and field, Tash has taken off her sweats and put her toe on the line in that setting,” Rick McGuire says. He coached Brown at Missouri and during her career as an international competitor.

One Thing Leads to Another

Brown’s earliest exposure to running came when she was chasing her brothers around the neighborhood. By fourth grade, she was lulling the fifth- and sixth-grade boys into a false sense of security during laps around the field to start recess, letting them out to a big lead before coming back and blowing them away down the final stretch.

That, too, set up a recurring theme in her career.

“She was very strong and could run faster tired than other people could,” McGuire says. “That was her trademark: she had a great finish. That’s how she made the Olympic team. Twice.”

She was the 200-meter state champion as a freshman in high school when her coach suggested she take up the 400 to help her 200 time. She qualified for the Junior National Olympic Trials in the 400 and, at the starting line before the race, cracked a smile because a man in the front rows was trying to ask her out on a date.

McGuire was at the meet. He liked that she seemed so relaxed.

“She might be in a total turmoil inside, but she never showed that,” McGuire says. “Tash and I fit well together. We both recognized it pretty early on. When you’ve made different choices than the people around you, over and over and over again, you get to the starting line knowing ‘I’ve done what I was supposed to do. I’ve done everything I can do. I am prepared.’ ”

Brown got hurt on her first day of practice at Mizzou. While she was rehabbing, she heard some of the other sprinters talking about candidates
for the 4×100-meter relay team, and she wasn’t one of them.

That didn’t sit very well. She spent the rest of her collegiate career lowering her times in the 200 and 400, so much so that she held the indoor and outdoor program record in each by the time she left. Her pictures still adorn the banners in the Hearnes Center for the Tigers’ 400-meter record indoors (51.92) and outdoors (50.86).

Tigers senior Valerie Thames says she didn’t know much about Brown’s running career before Brown came back to Missouri, other than that she’d been to the Olympics and “had all the records.”

“For the most part, they know the history. They don’t know all the details, but they know enough,” Natasha says. “Once you say ‘Olympics,’ they’re like, ‘OK, so you were special?’ So the only thing we talk about is ‘I was not special.’ But this is what I did differently.”

‘Just Another Track Meet’

Brian Brown and Natasha Kaiser shared an unusual courtship. The details vary depending on who’s telling the story of how they first met, but the gist is always the same.

He was a world-class high jumper. She was a world-class sprinter. They both made their first national team in 1989, talked extensively on the bus back to the airport and decided to stay in touch afterward. She was in Columbia. He was in Louisiana.

Through other national teams and more international competitions, Brown and Kaiser saw places together that usually are reserved for honeymoons: Lausanne, Switzerland. Lille, France. How could they not fall in love?

“There were so many workouts we did together — some that we fought at. There were a lot of arguments out there on the track and the golf course,” Natasha says. “We would go neck-and-neck, really pushing the pace. And then he’d come back and be like, ‘One more for Nationals.’ And I’d say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.’ But training with him actually pushed me to be better.”

Brian learned the pre-race rhythms of his partner: how she hated everything in the lead-up to the event. How a sense of calm really only came when she settled into the blocks at the starting line. During her more tense moments, Brian would just try to be there for her. Nothing more,
nothing less.

“Gimmicks didn’t work. Being whatever she needed, not trying to carry the conversation,” Brian says. “Just being there and, by being there, it made the moment not so surreal, not so heavy. We had a signature hug. My thing was to give her a hug and let her know that, up or down,
we’re good.”

So it was that night in early August 1992 at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, when Natasha Kaiser — she wouldn’t be ‘Brown’ for another three weeks — took the track for the women’s 4×400-meter final.

She had already weathered a stressful run through the U.S. Olympic Trials. The finish was so close that she wasn’t sure she had made the team until she took a very cautious victory lap and saw the results flash on the scoreboard.

She made it to the semifinals of the individual 400-meter competition at the Olympics and missed a finals berth by two-tenths of a second.

Now, she was slotted to run the first leg of the relay. She hated running the first leg.

“I’m standing, and I’m thinking, ‘This completely sucks. I don’t want to be here. I’m a wreck,’” Natasha says. “But then when you realize your face is on TV back home, and you get all the face time, I’m like, ‘This is actually the coolest thing. Everybody’s back home and seeing me standing here?’ ”

McGuire always made a point to tell his athletes that, no matter how prestigious the meet, the dimensions of the track were always the same. Brown was one of the best in the world running 400 meters, once around the track, back home in Missouri. Why wouldn’t the same be true in Barcelona?

After a momentary thrill that came with the realization that millions of people were seeing her face on television — and the not-so-momentary annoyance of having to head back to the starting line after a false start — Brown took that message to heart.

“To be honest, it’s just another track meet,” she says. “In your mind, nothing changes, other than the level of competition and the name. But it’s still just a track meet.” The gun sounded, and Brown took off from her spot in lane six. She made up the stagger on the runner to her right around the second turn and, when she handed off the baton to the second American runner, she had her team in first place.

Then it was off the track, get some water and watch the rest of the race.

“It is the coolest — but the most stressful — thing you will ever go through,” she says. “You get these 50 seconds of fame, then you’re done.”

The Unified team, made up of athletes from 12 former Soviet republics, drew even with the Americans at the end of the third leg, then passed them for the gold medal in the final straightaway.

Brown and her teammates stood on the medal stand while another national anthem played. But the next year, at the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, Brown got to hear “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the medal stand twice. Once when she finished second to American Jearl Miles in the individual 400, and again when she was part of the World Champion 4×400-meter relay team.

“When I hear (the anthem), it’s different for me,” she says. “I flash back to that moment of standing on the award stand, and they’re playing our national anthem. That was a big deal.”

The Next Generation

This spring, after a weight-room session, some of the sprinters that Brown coaches got curious.They pulled up her individual 400-meter race from the 1993 World Championships on YouTube and called her over to watch it with them.

“Do I get anxiety attacks when I watch it? Yeah, I get that,” she says, with a laugh. “When I see it, I remember everything I was thinking at that time.”

The runners asked her about the other competitors in the race. They watched her form, saw her stay strong over the last half of the race, listened as she described to them, in detail, her strategy and how she executed it.

If it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience for the coach, it was at least a valuable learning one for her athletes.

“I believe having personal experience makes her very credible for her position right now; just the fact that she knows what it took to get there and, pretty much, the times are the same as what she was running,” sophomore Maya Cody says. “That’s what it’s going to take for us to get to her point. When she tells us to do stuff, we believe that she knows what she’s talking about because she’s been there and done that.”

That’s exactly what head Missouri track and field coach Brett Halter was expecting when he brought Brown back to Columbia last summer. He and Brown shared an office as assistant coaches during her first stint at Missouri, and Halter was close with both her and Brian.

Halter says it’s difficult for successful track athletes to be successful coaches because the sport, as a rule, is a primarily individual endeavor. They have to rely on themselves, so they tend to fall into a bit of a selfish mindset.

That, Halter says, has never been a problem for Brown.

“A coach has to be selfless, put the athlete out front,” Halter says. “It’s no longer about them, their medals and accolades. It’s about the kid.”

And it’s why Thames couldn’t bear to give Brown the cold shoulder, even if she wanted to after being disappointed with a pre-season coaching change.

“Initially, I fought it, but you really can’t fight Coach Brown for too long,” Thames says. “She’s such a good person.”

It’s why she kept her ribbons in a shoebox and gifted her Olympic silver medal to her hometown. It’s why you have to be the one to broach the subject if you want to hear about that time in her life during which she just happened to be one of the fastest women in the world. Those experiences are for teaching, not for boasting.

“Natasha appreciated how the key people in her sport life provided for her a great deal,” McGuire says. “She knew that she had people who knew it was all about her getting every opportunity and having her ready to deliver when those opportunities came. I think you can see the direct line to how that impacts her coaching of others. She knows that she went to the line in huge races knowing she wasn’t alone.”

For Brown, success as a Missouri coach means her name slipping farther down the list of top times in program history.

She’s OK with that.

Photos by Travis Smith

The post Natasha Kaiser-Brown appeared first on ZOUNation Magazine.

With elaborate bunkers rising from the meadow and sandy soil sprinkled across the landscape, the St. Leon-Rot golf course just south of Frankfurt, Germany, was created to look like an old links course in the United Kingdom. When Jessica Meek, then 18, arrived at St. Leon-Rot in 2012 to represent Scotland in the European Girls Team Championship, the clear streams and cavernous dunes reminded her of the course she grew up playing back home, 1,000 miles away, in Carnoustie, Scotland.

As the tides turned, the layout proved to be anything but familiar. Meek was off to a rocky start, racking up double and triple bogeys. Those scouting her began to drop off, but University of Missouri women’s golf coach Stephanie Priesmeyer, better known as “Coach Coop,” stuck right by her side.

“It’s just as important for me to see how someone handles a bad round of golf as to see how they make it through one of their best rounds,” Priesmeyer says. “And with Jess, in that round she was able to keep laughing as she got through it.”

Meek has used that sense of humor to find success in a world full of bumps, bunkers and pits. Now a Mizzou senior, she’s grown into a standout player and holds the record for the second-lowest stroke average in program history at 71.8. But, in both golf and life, the biggest challenges are often the ones that cause her to miss by inches.

When Meek contemplated whether she should set off on a journey to the United States, she understood the risk of culture shock in a country she had never visited. She knew she would have to work on her putting. But above all, she was most worried about whether or not she could keep up as a student-athlete.

Meek has dyslexia. The disorder makes learning to read or interpret words, letters or other symbols incredibly difficult. In Meek’s brain, words are jumbled — they flip inside out and flop from back to front. As a child, she was always anxious, with reading and writing giving her particular unease. The diagnosis helped establish peace of mind, but Meek, reluctant to ask for help, was stubborn and embarrassed about her condition.

Being dyslexic means it takes Meek longer to complete her coursework — she says she has to work twice as hard as everyone else just to get a B or C. So when it came time to consider a move abroad, she worried she wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure as a student-athlete.

“I’m a homebird,” she says. “My mom’s from England, my dad’s from Scotland, and I grew up next to a golf course. People would say, ‘Why would you ever want to leave?’ ”

She talked it through with her dad; he was the person who encouraged her to pick up the game in the first place. He reminded her that as a kid she hated going to the driving range and she hated putting. But once she began hitting drivers, she was hooked. He said she needed to remember the thrill of chasing something hard. So with that in mind, she made the decision: She would pursue the opportunity to golf at Mizzou, and she would pursue it with 
everything she had.

The first semester was rough. She was adjusting to college culture in America while playing a different type of golf.

In Scotland, courses are built on sand; in the United States, the primary turf is dirt. Greens in America stretch farther and wider, so putting becomes more important than it is in Scotland, where golfers swing as hard as they can to combat the wind.

The stakes in the States felt much higher, not only because Meek was competing at a collegiate level, but also because there were more players. In Scotland, she saw 60 to 100 players at the premier national tournaments. Here, she saw just as many — if not more — golfers at regular 
season tournaments.

Golf is an individual sport, but the Mizzou women’s team fosters a sense of community with regular meetings during which members don’t talk just about technique, but also about life itself. Meek was quiet in those early meetings — she spent the time instead repeatedly reviewing shots she had made. She judged her days solely on the numbers she recorded on the course and considered it a good day only if she had a good round.

Through many hours of work and team conviviality, Meek finished her freshman season with the record freshman stroke average of 76. She posted impressive numbers every season, but had her best season of all during her junior year. She now felt more comfortable in America and had found confidence on the golf course. During the Tigers’ Johnie Imes Invitational home tournament, her most memorable yet, everything went right. She stayed under par, but most of all, she had fun. She quit counting her score at each hole and stayed present to enjoy the game. But as she walked the final three holes with Coach Coop, her arms feeling like jelly, Meek wondered whether she could keep up the extraordinary pace she had set for herself. On the 16th hole, she drove the ball 112 yards over a large pond, landing about 15 feet from the pin. She placed first, won her first collegiate tournament and set a 54-hole program record by 
shooting 15 under par.

“It took me awhile to realize just how difficult golf is,” Meek says. “I thought it was supposed to be the stress reliever, the place where I go out and leave it all on the fairway. I taught myself to be in the moment with that shot, hit it, then think about the next shot. And not get too ahead of myself.”

Golf is a game with the smallest margins and misses, so Meek, with dyslexia, must still pay careful attention to the details. She often flubs numbers, so she relies on coaches and teammates to help 
call her out.

“I was recently playing with a teammate and read that it was 135 to the pin. But it said 153. It’s stressful sometimes, especially in the middle of the semester, when classes and the season are in full swing and I can’t make sense of my notes,” she says.

But Ryan King, her academic counselor, has always been impressed by Meek’s work ethic and determination, especially in a major like sports management, which he says isn’t easy. But most of all, he’s encouraged by how much she’s 
grown as a leader.

“She came to me pretty quiet and nervous about being able to keep up,” King says. “I’m so impressed by how vocal she is now, and how she encourages the other members of her team to go to study sessions and keep up with their work.”

Because Meek has struggled in the classroom, she’s developed a work ethic that directly translates to the effort she puts in on the golf course. It helps her relate to her teammates — everyone struggles in different ways. As the only senior on the team, Meek has become a role model for the younger members, setting the tone for practices 
and tournaments.

“When you’re a freshman or sophomore, you think you’re the only one experiencing the low points of college golf,” she says. “But the people who have come before you have been in the same spot. I try to highlight the good things everyone does, because a compliment can change someone’s day.”

At the end of the day, as Meek has learned, it’s not about the score, but about being a good person. She credits Coach Coop for helping her learn how to be a “good human.” This year, Meek has learned to embrace those ‘off days’ — that they happen to everyone and hardly define a golf career, a lesson she’ll need as she prepares to go pro.

As Coach Coop reminds her, it can take years for athletes to play at the professional level, but after her graduation in May, Meek has decided to head to Qualifying School (or “q school”)  to qualify for the LPGA. “I know it’s not going to be easy,” she says. “I’ve thought about every possible scenario. But I’ve loved playing in the U.S., and would love to continue my career here.”

She knows good things can happen when you take a big swing.

Photos by Travis Smith of Content AllStars

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