The Optimist

The Wildcats will set their eyes on an April weekend series with the Indiana Hoosiers in Bloomington, Indiana. With the team’s midweek contest against the Texas Tech Red Raiders being postponed due to predicted inclement weather on Tuesday, the game has been rescheduled for April 22 at 5:05 p.m in Abilene.

Brothers Robbie and Gabriel Alatrash sought to provide service to cancer patients beyond monetary donations, so they created and now run the Tandem Initiative, fostering projects like Comfort Through Chemo that supply cancer patients with pastimes. The goal of the initiative was to not only offer support, but to build community and then to be in that community with them. It is that “togetherness aspect,” Robbie said, that inspired the name of the initiative.

In their first year, the club soccer team has built something from nothing. This weekend, they will find out how far that something can take them. The Wildcats will host the Lone Star Invitational at the soccer complex adjacent to the Dodge Jones Youth Sports Center, about 10 minutes from campus. The seven-team field includes Oklahoma State, Texas Tech B, Texas State, Sam Houston, North Texas, and Tarleton State.

The Agricultural and Environmental Sciences club led its 70th annual intramural rodeo on Thursday at the Taylor Telecom Arena. The women competed in ribbon run, cow sorting, and goat tying, and the men competed in wild sheep milking, double mugging, and steer saddling. Students could also sign up for steer riding.

The Big Country’s “big three” all came together at the Warhawk Classic hosted by McMurry this past weekend, where the Wildcats showed strong outings across the board against Division III neighbors Hardin-Simmons and McMurry.

Softball came within a few feet of one of its most electric moments of the season Wednesday night. Down two with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning, WAC home run leader Ari Maxwell stepped to the plate representing the winning run. Maxwell drove the first pitch she saw deep to centerfield, but North Texas centerfielder Taylor Platt retreated and made an over-the-head catch to end the Wildcats’ comeback bid, securing a 9-7 Mean Green victory at Poly Wells Field.

The Venture Out market, which brought together student businesses, offered products ranging from coffee to handmade jewelry on Wednesday in the Student Recreation and Wellness Center. The market is connected to the foundations of entrepreneurship class, which allows students to start their own business to create, market, and sell their own products.

The Wildcats are preparing to face off in the semi-final of the WAC Championship on Friday afternoon. The WAC Women’s Tennis Tournament features a four-team bracket. The Wildcats will play alongside Tarleton State, UT Arlington, and Utah Tech. The tournament is single elimination, with the championship match scheduled for Saturday morning. After a 21-match season, three of those against conference opponents, the Wildcats are ready to begin the postseason.

Emerson Meggers, junior infielder from Vacaville, California, swings in her last at-bat. (Photo by Naya Pacheco) Gallery: Softball falls to UNT in home game April 16, 2026 by Naya Pacheco Leave a Comment Softball fell to the University of North Texas 9-7 on Wednesday at Poly Wells Field. The two teams faced a weather delay that pushed the game time back an additional hour and a half. The Wildcats scored in the second, sixth and seventh innings to bring their total to seven runs.

Taking classes from home can be really convenient, and online learning makes it easy to fit school into a busy schedule. But the real question is, are you actually learning as much as you would in a classroom? I found out the hard way that just being in front of a screen does not always give you the full experience. I took a class that I thought was supposed to be hands-on and in person, but instead, we were stuck doing assignments on a computer.