The Scrambled Aches

TigerBlog would like to tell you about "The Scrambled Aches."

Who are they? Well, after two weeks, it appears that the Aches are the Bad News Bears of the CoSIDA fitness challenge.

If you don't know, CoSIDA stands for the "College Sports Information Directors of America." It is the national organization for college athletic communications, an organization that encourages professional development and runs important national events, such as the Academic All-American program.

It also promotes camaraderie among those in the profession, and it's current fitness challenge is part of that. And it's for a good cause - exercise.

TigerBlog saw the announcement about the contest on the CoSIDA website and registered. He already rides his bike pretty much every day. Why not be part of the contest?

And so it was that TB was placed on a team called "The Scrambled Aches." It's a good name. Cute.

There are a bunch of cute names in the contest. TB's personal favorite is "Legs Miserables," but there the contest also features "COVID Kai," "Stats and Squats Crew" and "CoFIT-19," among others.

A point system divides competitors into three divisions, based on how much you said you exercise weekly in general, and each team has players in each division. The weekly standings have been released twice to date.

The Aches have finished in 10th place both times.

There are 10 teams competing.

But hey, everyone loved the Bad News Bears, right? 

In all seriousness, the best part of the whole thing is getting to meet people in the same profession who are scattered around the country and are in every area of the college athletics world. The team captain is a man named Jay Stancil, who is the sports information director at Union College, an NAIA school in Kentucky.

There also team representatives from two Big Ten schools, Minnesota and Wisconsin. One of them, Mandy Hansen, has been to Princeton's campus with the Gophers' women's hockey team.

TB's experience in all his years of doing this is that people in communications have a stronger bond than any other group in college athletics. Maybe it's because of the amount of time around events that each school's SID has to reach out to his or her counterpart. 

Maybe it's because that regardless of what level of college athletics it is, there is a lot of commonality in what is required to do the job well. There is nobody on any level of college athletic communications from whom TB couldn't learn at least something new, or see a different thought in producing content and reaching an audience, even after all the years he's been doing this.

Whatever the reason, the communications world has always been very close. That was true during the Ivy League SID meetings that TB used to go to 25 years ago, and it's true now with the CoSIDA fitness challenge.

Getting to meet his Aches teammates, and connecting each week via Zoom, or by the running Group Me chat, has been a side benefit that has been most welcome.

That's what the contest is about, right? Promote good health and build relationships in the profession.

For his part, TB has tried to ride a little longer than normal to try to help the Aches. And hey, there are eight weeks left. The team has to finish better than 10th one of these days.

Oh, and the national leader in the individual category? That would be TB's Princeton colleague Warren Croxton, who, it turns out, is also a big-time trash-talker.

Speaking of bicycling, there was a story on goprincetontigers.com about men's lightweight rowing coach (and endurance athlete) Marty Crotty and the role that he and one of his former athletes, Bradley Werntz, have played in developing a revolutionary new bicycle wheel that made its way all the way to the Tour de France. 

You can read the whole story HERE.

It's a fascinating story about how sports leads to innovation and how the combination of athletics and engineering leads to advancement. Who would have thought to reinvent the bicycle tire?

Maybe TB should get his hands on some of them. It couldn't hurt the Aches' chances.