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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 25, 2015)
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2015 I SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 I © 2015 STUDENT MEDIA I ©THEBATTONLINE BATT THE BATTALION I THEBATT.COM Senior Greg Yates earned his third career victory Tuesday. Yates nets tourney win Aggies post best team score on final round of Valspar By Cole Stenholm After a relatively slow start to his 2014-15 campaign, Texas A&M senior golfer Greg Yates re claimed the spotlight for the A&M men’s golf program with a victory Tuesday at the Valspar Collegiate Invitational, which fielded five of the nation’s top golf programs. Yates shot three consecutive rounds of-4 (67) to post -12 (201) for the tournament, a score that se cured the third victory of his career by three strokes over the nearest competitor. No. 20 Hank Lebioda of Florida State. “He hit a ton of great shots but what was most impressive was that when he did hit a bad shot he was able to recover and never let a poor shot get him down,” head coach J.T. Higgins said. Yates won the 2011 HBU Men’s Intercollegiate as a fresh man and then the 2014 Sea Best Invitational as a junior. Up until this point, however, the 2014-15 campaign had not exactly been kind to the Ag gies 2013-14 All-Central Region Team member and second-team All SEC selection. He had no top- five finishes to date, after having led the team in that category a year ago, and had dropped all the way back to No. 181 in the nation’s rankings. As a team, Texas A&M landed in fifth place with a cumulative score of +4 (856), 21 strokes shy of tournament champion No. 2 Florida State, which shot -17 (835). However, A&M did match the final round low score of -7 (277) in its closing efforts Tuesday to advance past two teams on the leaderboard. Texas A&M returns to the links Easter Weekend as it prepares to host the Aggie Invitational. By Jennifer Reiley ^■^F^^exas lawmakers are at tempting once again to place a statewide ban on texting while driv ing, hoping that a change in the governor’s office will yield a differ ent result. Rep. Tom Craddick authored the bill, which has now passed through committee and is ex pected to be read on the House floor Wednesday. Craddick pre viously brought forth legislation about texting while driving only to have the legislation vetoed by then-Gov. Rick Perry. “When I first filed, only nine states had done it or were look ing at it,” Craddick said. “Now 44 states have passed it and 38 Texas cities. In Texas, texting while driving falls under distracted driving, one of the top five causes of vehicu lar accidents. In 2013, the Texas Department of Transportation re ported 94,943 crashes due to dis tracted driving. If passed, HB 80 would expand on current legislation that outlaws texting in school zones and pro hibits all texting, even if the ve hicle is stopped at a light or stop sign. “An operator commits an of fense if the operator uses a portable wireless communication device to read, write, or send a text-based communication while operating a motor vehicle unless the vehicle is stopped and is outside a lane of travel,” the bill states. Consequences for texting while driving would be fines of more than $99 for a first-time offense or $200 if the offender has been previously convicted for the same offense. Alva Ferdinand, assistant pro fessor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health, has conducted studies on distracted driving and testified about her research to the Texas Congress TEXTING ON PG. 2 B-CS BASEBALL In the swing of things ■II Jena Floyd — THE BATTALION Trapeze academy brings high-flying antics to B-CS By Amanda Talbot Members of the Lone Star Trapeze Academy in Bryan are no strangers to heights — swinging from metal bars 27 feet in the air above a giant net is a part of their job description. Lone Star Trapeze Academy recent ly celebrated its one-year anniversary. Co-owners Rhys Challicombe, Chad Davis and Stacy Majors have brought their acrobatic expertise to the com munity through the school, which is one of the only three trapeze schools in Texas. The other two are located in Dallas and Austin. “There’s a lot on the east coast, a lot on the west coast,” Challicombe said. “Bryan doesn’t normally get too cold ... So weather is good down here.” Challicombe and Davis moved from Australia to teach trapeze in Texas, while Majors is from Bryan. “Stacy grew up here and she talked about the Aggie Spirit — something I didn’t really understand but sort of went along with, but arriving here it’s evident everywhere in the people that I speak to,” Challicombe said. “Just a very big community spirit.” Chalhcombe had been teaching tra peze and cleaning high-rise windows in Melbourne, Australia, before mov ing to Texas. “Chad married Stacy and we’ve all been doing circus — flying trapeze for a while now,” Challicombe said. “And we decided we wanted to open it up and run it for ourselves so people could experience it the way we wanted to teach it.” Challicombe started trapeze when he was 18. After high school, he took a gap year, which is quite common in Australia, but then never went to col lege after learning the trapeze. He went through Bali, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and the Great Barrier Reef in different resorts before moving back to Australia. He has been teaching trapeze for about 10 years and teaches a wide variety of ages, from children, to young professionals, to the elderly. “Chad holds the record for the three of us with an 87-y ear-old, which wasn’t done here, but which he taught,” Chal licombe said. All types of people can experience trapeze, Challicombe said. “I’ve taught somebody in a wheel chair that wanted to have the experi ence of swinging,” Challicombe said. “Also a blind person, so disability is not really an issue at all. He enjoyed just TRAPEZE ON PG. 2 A&M BOUNCES BACK WITH CONVINCING WIN OVER UTSA, 11-1 By Cole Stenholm After its first loss of the season, Texas A&M re bounded strongly Tuesday night, defeating the UTSA Roadrunners by an 11-1 margin. Ronnie Gideon sparked the Aggie offense with four RBIs and a home run on the night. Freshman pitcher Turner Larkins also had a stellar outing on the mound. The No. 1 Aggies got started early, as they put up a six-run first inning to take a commanding lead they would only build on for the remainder of the game. A&M (25-1) added insurance in the fifth with a four-run inning, and a run in the seventh gave the Aggies the 11-0 advan tage. The Aggies outhit the Roadrunners by a 19-to-4 mark. The pitching staff came through with another big game. Larkins went six innings, allowing only two hits and no runs and and talked four strikeouts on the evening. Behind him, Brigham ITill, Blake Kopetsky and Corbin Man- tin kept the Roadrunners (13-11) in check for the remainder of the game. The Aggies return to Olsen Field this weekend for their second SEC series of the year, taking on the Missouri Tigers. NBA FORMER A&M STANDOUT MIDDLETON WINS GAME WITH BUZZER-BEATER Former A&M basketball player Khris Middleton spurred his Milwaukee Bucks to an 89-88 victory over the Miami Heat with a 3-pointer at the buzzer Tuesday. Middleton is no stranger to clutch baskets, as he netted a last-second shot from beyond the arc on Dec. 16to defeat the Phoenix Suns. JP I2 n MUI.C0M
