Victoria Hayward will be back on the field this weekend as a player and as an owner. After hitting .300 at the Tokyo Olympics, the Canadian outfielder heads one of four teams that start play Saturday at Athletes Unlimited in Rosemont, Illinois.
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Throughout the history of APSU athletics, there have been numerous players, coaches and staff members that have helped in paving the way for the current generation of student-athletes.
While their impact may be overlooked by many, their legacies should be all but forgotten to current Governors.
The All State now highlights the career of former APSU softball coach and current Athletics Communications Assistant Chris Austin, who’s impact on the university’s athletics program is unmatched.
A Clarksville native, Austin graduated from nearby Clarksville High School before attending APSU in the late 1970s. His original plan for college was to get a history degree, teaching certificate and coach at the high school level, but his path was anything but what he could have expected.
Feb 26, 2021
Haylie Wagner, Gwen Svekis and Victoria Hayward all ran into one another’s arms upon the final out of their softball season, on Sept. 28. Wagner was the starting pitcher, Svekis her catcher and Hayward the center fielder, and theirs was the standard embrace of teammates winning a championship game: exhaustion mixed with joy, streaked with happy tears. Except that this situation was not standard at all. Almost a year earlier, they had been the first three players to sign on with an upstart, experimental league; and while they were, for this moment, on the same squad, they’d separated and rejoined sporadically over the course of the six-week season, acting as teammates one week and opponents the next. Though they had just won the final game of the season together, they had not won a championship. In fact, no team title was awarded. Instead, players were ranked individually, using a unique scoring system, and the lone gold medal went to one of their teammates, the staf