By Katie Spencer
Carrboro Commons Writer

Just prior to the torrential downpour Sunday, a storm of runners descended on Carrboro for a pint of Maple View ice cream.

I was among the 250 willing to fill up on dairy halfway through a five kilometer run, all for a good cause.

Nick Hutchins and Matt Hamrick perform for the crowd’s applause. The duo barely beat out the “dancing cow” to win best costume.
Staff photo by Katie Spencer

The event was called the Maple View Challenge, a local version of North Carolina State University’s Krispy Kreme Challenge, where runners eat a dozen doughnuts in the middle of a four mile race.

We started at the Morehead Planetarium and went down Cameron Avenue to the Roberson bike path. At the end of the path we found a well organized ice cream eating station. Anyone competing had to finish off a pint of strawberry sorbet or vanilla, chocolate-chip or double-chocolate ice cream before heading back the same way, full of dairy.

I have never seen the bike path so crowded. The returning runners had one thing on their minds: keeping the ice cream down.

The idea came from UNC-Chapel Hill students David Campbell, a senior environmental studies major, and João Toste, a junior economics major, who were training for a triathlon at the time. The two stopped at Maple View Farm just north of Carrboro, where they joked about an event that combined physical exercise with eating ice cream.
Read more

By Sean Umstead
Carrboro Commons Writer

Carrboro High School Athletic Director April Ross sits at her desk preparing the necessary behind the scenes work that must be done for sporting events to go off without a hitch.
Staff photo by Sean Umstead

When the Charlotte Bobcats began their inaugural season in 2004 they won a modest 22 percent of their games. Setting up one team clearly has challenges; setting up 20 new teams could be overwhelming.

That is what April Ross, Carrboro High School’s athletic director, has on her plate after taking over for Steve Reinhart, who resigned in December.

Ross, originally from Bath, was an athletic administrator at Briggs High School in Columbus, Ohio, before returning to North Carolina.

“I had been looking to come back home, and to open a brand new building to start something great from the beginning, which was one of my career goals,” Ross said.

Ross said her responsibilities include managing coaches, monitoring athletes’ academic eligibility, ordering transportation, scheduling and everything else that’s required to make a program run smoothly.

Ross said the new student athletes are putting forth an extraordinary effort to get teams off to a good start.

“The student athletes try extremely hard,” Ross said. “They give it 100 percent.”

Ross said she understands the difficulty of a new school trying to compete with established and perennially successful teams.
“We don’t have that experience factor,” she said.

Ross said chemistry within each team is key to building strong foundations, which is even more important when competing with teams that have been together for many years. She said such as foundation can be established by athletes working with their teammates throughout the summer.
Read more

By Alexandra Mansbach
Carrboro Commons Writer

Even the pouring rain couldn’t dampen the spirits of the women’s Carrboro High School soccer team on a recent game night.

Carrboro High School took on the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics on March 19 in a game riddled with rain, wind and power outages. But the team stayed strong, passing accurately and communicating clearly — eventually ending the game with a 1-1 tie in overtime. The Carrboro soccer squad appeared to be anything but a new team.

Coach Robin Bulleri talks to the Carrboro High School women’s soccer team during halftime of their March 19 game.
Staff photo by Alexandra Mansbach

“This is an entirely new program. The teams are actually very young,” said Scott Swartzwelder, president of the CHS Athletic Booster Club. “It’s kind of a double-edged sword.”

The newness of the program gives students who have little experience in sports a chance to play and, because there are no seniors at the school, no players will graduate at the end of this school year.

“There are lots of kids with little experience,” Swartzwelder said. “We’ve got some great athletes here, and a lot of these kids wouldn’t even get to play somewhere else.”

Read more