THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015
PAGE 7A
Kansas football to host student appreciation day
CHRISTIAN HARDY
@HardyNFL
CAMPUS CHALLENGE WITH DAVID BEATY
11:30 A.M. - 1 P.M.
WATSON LIBRARY LAWN
OPEN PRACTICE WITH LIVE DJ AND CONTESTS 4-6 P.M.
Kansas football coach David Beaty isn't only trying to shift the culture on the field, but also among students of the University when it comes to athletics. That shift has already begun on the field, but on Thursday, it also begins for the student body.
Beaty and the football team will hold a campus challenge on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the Watson Library Lawn, only two days before Saturday's spring game. Beaty will host the challenge, and plans to meet students at the event. The event will be followed by an open practice with a live DJ and contests from 4-6 p.m.
"There's a lot of different things that we've got going on," Beaty said. "We're trying to get to know [the students] and seeing if we can get them to want to stay a whole game... to not just always leave at halftime, or that kind of stuff."
Beaty was with Kansas football in 2008, 2009 and 2011. With attendance down in 2014, Beaty plans to do something
about that. To bring attendance up, and recruits coming in, he must get the students to buy in, and get to know the team.
"I want our university and the students of our university to have ownership of our program," Beaty said. "In order for you to understand what people do, you have to be educated about it, and the only way you do that is by spending time with them, and educating them on who you are, and what you do, and why you're doing what you're doing, and how they can be of help.
"They are absolutely necessary, for a program to become relevant. It had so much to do with them."
By developing a relationship with students, Beaty hopes to bring back enthusiasm of his past days to the program.
"We want it to be exactly what it is here: the wildest, craziest bunch of students in the country," Beaty said. "They're the next piece in the process."
The challenge will consist of three events: the strikeout challenge, pop-a-shot and the bag toss. There are two in particular the students won't be able to match him -in, according to Beaty, who is a former quarterback.
"They're going to have a hard time of beating me in cornhole," Beaty said. "There's a football/baseball throw that they're going to have a hard time beating me in, too. I've got a pretty good motion still. Until I get the rotator cuff out of wack, I should be OK."
— Edited by Garrett Long
AMIE JUST/KANSAN
Football coach David Beaty explains the talent KU football signed for this upcoming season. Today he will host a campus challenge on the Watson Library Lawn at 1 p.m., followed by an open practice.
BEN BRODSKY/KANSAN
Two Kansas runners compete at the Kansas Relays last weekend. This weekend, some of the team will travel to Missouri.
Kansas track and field will travel to Joplin, La Jolla for meets this weekend
Following a successful Kansas Relays, the Kansas track and field team will have two athlete contingents journey to meets in both Joplin, Mo., and La Jolla, Calif. Throwers will compete in the Triton Invitational in La Jolla, while hurdlers and sprinters 'will go to Joplin for the Bill Williams/Bob Laptad Invitational.
Senior hurdler Michael Stigler is among the athletes going to Joplin, and freshman thrower Cole Ceban is one of four throwers participating in the discus in La Jolla.
On May 2. Kansas will be hosting the Rock Chalk Classic, which will be their final regular season meet. They will then compete in the Big 12 Championships May 15-17 in Ames, Iowa.
The team was originally scheduled to compete in the Drake Relays up in Des Moines, Iowa.
- Edited by G.J. Melia
BEN BRODSKY/KANSAN
Lindsay Vollmer, a senior from Hamilton, Mo., prepares to throw at the Kansas Relays. Vollmer finished in fifth place in the women's quadrangular event.
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE DAY Honoring BOB DOTSON
KU Graduate • Storyteller • Broadcaster Winner of eight Emmys, five Edward R. Murrow Awards and more than a dozen Radio Television Digital News Association Writing Awards
NATIONAL CITATION PRESENTATION Thursday, April 23 • 4 p.m. • Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Memorial Union
2015 William Allen White Foundation National Citation Recipient
Since graduating from the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1968, NBC News Correspondent Bob Dotson has been crisscrossing the United States to share the inspiring stories of ordinary people. His long-running "American Story with Bob Dotson" on the "Today" show has won more than 100 awards. His third book, "American Story, a Lifetime
Search for Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things," is a New York Times Best Seller. Dotson received a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science from KU and a master's degree in television and film from Syracuse University. In college, he worked at KMBC-TV in Kansas City and KFKU-KANU-FM in Lawrence. Dotson began his broadcasting career at the NBC station in Oklahoma City as director of Special Projects. He joined NBC News in 1975 as a reporter in Cleveland. Two years later, he opened NBC's first news bureau in Dallas and covered Central America. In 1979, he moved to the NBC News bureau in
Atlanta. He has worked on several NBC News magazine programs and "NBC Nightly News."
KU WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATIONS The University of Kansas
: