✈ Here We Go. It’s Convention Week

🎶 Your Morning Pick-Me-Up.

🗞 In Today’s Playbook. Lawyers, Guns and Money. Warren Zevon National Debate On Transgender Athletes Finally Reaches Supreme Court. How Sarah Buckner Rose to the Olympic Level of Ice Hockey Officiating. Roanoke, North Central Play Giant Killers at NWCA Duals. Convention Calendar.

🗓 What’s Happening Today. The DIII Student-Athlete Advisory Committee begins a two-day meeting in Washington, D.C.

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“Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.”

» State of Play. “Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.”

» Why It Matters. “She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care. Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.”

» What They’re Saying. “There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview.”

» The Key Stat. “Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.”

» Be Smart. “The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.”

“From the time she first laced up her skates, Sarah Buckner has experienced hockey at nearly every level.

Buckner would go on to play in high school, for the Duluth Northern Stars, before becoming a college athlete at Augsburg, a Division III university in Minneapolis.

After Buckner graduated in 2016, a friend encouraged her to keep skating as an official. She started at the adult amateur level, followed by the college, professional and international ranks.

Next month, Buckner will skate at the world's highest level as one of 10 linespersons and 22 total women's hockey officials at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.”

» Background. “Buckner was a two-sport athlete at Augsburg, playing softball in addition to hockey. Though she had a dual workload athletically, she enjoyed having a routine to follow in both the winter and spring.”

» Taking The Whistle. “Before stepping on the ice as an official, Buckner remembers being a bit apprehensive. Nevertheless, she said yes. The first league in which she officiated, the Women's Hockey Association of Minnesota, turned out to be the best place for her to start. As Buckner continued to grow, colleagues who shared the ice with her began to see her potential and became mentors she could lean on.”

» Fast Track. “Within two years of her first season as an official, she was working games at the Division III level for the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the same conference she played in at Augsburg. A year later, she earned her international officiating license from the International Ice Hockey Federation. By 2020, she was skating in her first international tournament before the COVID-19 pandemic paused things. She resumed international tournaments in 2022, and by 2023, she had made it to the women's world championship level. In between international play, Buckner has officiated for every professional women's hockey league, including the current Professional Women's Hockey League.”

» Why It Matters. “To be selected as a linesperson for the Olympics, Buckner had to perform at the highest level. In a pool that began with 100 people, she made it through four rounds of cuts to be selected as one of the 10 linespersons.”

Not a good weekend to be ranked No. 1 in the country at the NWCA National Duals in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Fourth-seeded North Central shocked the women’s wrestling world, as the Cardinals handed top-ranked Iowa its first dual loss in program history, 23-21, in the semifinals. Dasia Yearby decked her opponent in 1:38 in the decisive 207-pound match for the upset. NCC also toppled second-seeded McKendree, 21-18, to win the tournament title.

Sixth-seeded Roanoke announced it will be a force to be reckoned with at the NCAAs in March, knocking off #2 Augsburg in the semis and #1 Wartburg in the championship to capture the men’s DIII title.

The No. 13 Wartburg women needed a late fall to win its semifinal against #23 Aurora and won the first seven matches vs. #16 Simpson in the DIII final to bring home the championship trophy.

Monday: DIII Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Tuesday: DIII Management Council, 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. | SAAC, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
ADR Programming, 2 - 5:30 p.m. | DIII Student Immersion Program, 2 - 4:30 p.m.
Association-Wide Programming, 2:30 - 4:45 p.m.

“It’s not exactly the Sharks and the Jets, but there’s a turf war playing out between two rival factions. Pickleballers are taking over the territory of tennis players, with thousands of pickleball courts being built on top of existing tennis courts.

In 2025, pickleball was the fastest growing sport in the US for a fourth consecutive year. As of 2023, 48 million American adults played Tennis But Without All The Pesky Moving Around annually, according to the Association of Pickleball Professionals. The sport’s rising popularity in the US has spurred the construction of new pickleball courts, often at the expense of tennis courts.

Why the tennis takeover? It’s a cheaper way to build. According to the YMCA of the Sunbelt in Georgia, converting four tennis courts into 12 pickleball courts cost $150,000; building that many pickleball courts from scratch would have cost $1 million.

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