Sports

Throughout his career, Hans Van der Mars, Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, has left his mark on physical education, teacher education and sport pedagogy. On March 30, that mark was honored at the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) America National Convention and Expo, where he received the 2023 Luther Halsey Gulick Award.

Though many student-athletes use a wide variety of nutritional supplements, the industry is not well regulated, says Arizona State University College of Health Solutions Professor Floris Wardenaar, who is designing a questionnaire to help identify student-athletes at risk of taking harmful nutritional supplements. Pac-12, the sports conference of which ASU is a member, is funding the efforts through its Student-Athlete Health and Well-being Initiative.

Zach Featherstone, who played five seasons for the Minnesota Twins, chose Arizona State University because of its extensive program offerings and split his days between his studies and the game.

First-generation transfer student Manuel Aparicio understands the unique experiences of transfer students and the necessity of providing support in their educational pursuits.

NRG Stadium, the site of the 2023 men’s basketball Final Four, was a cacophony of sounds and sights when Sun Devil Athletics officials visited this past weekend. But they weren’t in Houston to follow the games or get autographs. As they took a tour of the stadium wearing credentials that read “Future HOST,” they were thinking ahead to 2024, when ASU will be the host school of the Final Four.

ASU Associate Professor Brendan O’Connor's background as a linguistic anthropologist and avid baseball fan sparked the idea to dive deeper into multilingualism in baseball, leading to the first book-length study to look at language diversity in professional sports.