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Theatre and Digital Marketing • 2027
The BU men’s basketball team is looking forward to a fresh start in their 2026-2027 season. After some hard losses last season, the team and the coaches are excited to start anew. With returning players and a large group of promising new players, the team wants this to be their best season yet.
The team’s moto for this year is “Change the Narrative.” Their goal is to be better on the court and in the classroom, and they hope to hold a team GPA of 3.0 or higher.
“’Change the Narrative’ has nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with Bluefield as a community,” says Coach Joseph Cooper. “If we are able to create an environment around our program that welcomes people, then we have done our job.”
Psychology • 2027
Dr. Jessica Sykes has become a beloved faculty member on campus. She is involved in several faith-based activities and is a faculty mentor for the women’s volleyball team – all while serving as the chair of the Department of Psychology and Human Services.
Dr. Sykes earned her undergraduate degrees in athletic training and kinesiology from Lincoln Memorial University. Although she had planned to attend medical school, she returned to LMU as a graduate assistant so she could get a free master’s degree and become an athletic trainer. But LMU had limited options at the time, and Dr. Sykes ended up getting her master’s degree in counseling.
“God completely flipped my careers around,” Dr. Sykes said. She went from wanting to be an orthopedic surgeon to a counselor.
Mass communications • 2030
Kyree Edwards is a Bluefield University junior and the starting running back for the Rams football team. He is recognized as a dedicated and hard-working player, excelling both athletically and academically.
Born in Gainesville, Florida, Edwards graduated from Williston High School and transferred to Bluefield from the University of North Carolina-Pembroke. He is majoring in criminal justice. During his high school career, he received the Pride of the Devils Award for his exceptional performance and effort both on and off the field. He also earned Class 1R First-Team All-State and First-Team All-Area Running Back honors after an outstanding senior season, amassing 1,730 yards and 31 touchdowns in a 10-1 season. Additionally, Edwards played basketball in high school.
He was a recipient of the spring 2026 Rammie Award and was named the offensive player of the year for the 2025-2026 football season. In the first half of the 2026-2027 season, Edwards was twice named the Appalachian Athletic Conference (AAC) Offensive Player of the Week. In one game, he achieved a career-best with 22 attempts and 200 rushing yards in a 28-7 victory over Greensboro.
Theatre and Digital Marketing • 2027
Dr. Olivia Andrews grew up in Pennsylvania, earned her undergraduate degree in biology at Lockhaven University, and thought she wanted to become a dentist. Then she took one class about bugs and everything changed.
She knew very early in her academic career that she wanted to get her PhD. Dr. Andrews started her master’s degree at Virginia Tech, but she took on a large project and was able to completely bypass her master’s degree. She earned her PhD in May, an impressive feat at the age of twenty-seven.
Dr. Andrews realized she wanted to teach while working as a teacher’s assistant in the last couple years of her doctoral program. She enjoyed mentoring her students and was given many outreach opportunities. She quickly developed a passion for teaching. Her undergraduate education also gave her a love for smaller schools. It is important to her that her students be more than “just a number.”
Communications & Criminal Justice • 2028
As the leaves at BU change colors, our Lady Rams basketball team don the red and navy that represent Bluefield University. Last season, the Lady Rams won 3 games and lost 26, averaging 51.9 points per game while their opponents averaged 71.6. This season, the team may rise again, with top scorer and defensive player Ashanti Northcross – averaging 8.3 points scored and 2.1 steals a game – on the roster for the 2026-2027 season. Head Coach Jake Wright is now aided by Assistant Men’s and Women’s Coach Ethan Rainwater. Wright began coaching the Lady Rams in 2023, while Rainwater was recently added to the coaching staff.
Wright is looking forward to the upcoming season, saying, “I’m very excited about the future; it’s going to be valleys, peaks and valleys… I’m excited to ride those peaks and valleys.”
Senior player Lauren Bragg states her hopes for the team in this upcoming season as well, acknowledging the need for “aggressive defense.”
Psychology • 2027
As one of his first initiatives as the new provost and chief academic officer at Bluefield University, Dr. Jason Craig introduced a new mentor program designed to strengthen relationships between faculty members and student-athletes.
The program was created to provide a bridge between the classroom and the athletic venue, helping professors develop relationships with student-athletes outside of the academic environment while serving as representatives of athletic teams on campus.
“It (the mentor program) is there for the students to feel supported and that they have a bridge between the classroom and the sport they play,” Dr. Craig said. “It also gives them someone to talk to that is not their coach or professor so they can perform to the highest standard.”
English • 2027
Bluefield University’s women’s soccer team has forfeited the rest of the 2026 season due to injuries, which include ACL tears, knee injuries, and ankle injuries. Athletics Director Corey Mullins explained the decision.
“Through the course of the preseason and into the first couple of matches of the season, we had some injuries and some other issues that we felt like it was not gonna be physically safe for our team to continue to play,” Corey Mullins said. “We just could not field a team . . . that was gonna be able to go out there every day and play for ninety minutes.”
The team played its first game against Reinhardt on September 14. Although the roster included 15 players, multiple girls were coming back from last year’s injuries and were not cleared to play. The team’s single sub was allowed to play only a short time because she also was coming back from an injury.
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October 2026
Issue 28 • October 2
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