EIUPanthers Podcast

Welcome as we kick of our third season of EIU Panthers Podcast visiting with with former EIU football player Jamie Pilson who has gone on to be a successful businessman in the local community.  He talks about the experience of playing for former head coach Bob Spoo along with a couple of new initiatives taking place surrounding the EIU Football Program with the Panther Football Players Association and Panther Football Champions.

Our spring season of EIUPanthers Podcast continues as this week we visit with former Eastern Illinois women’s basketball player Mariah King.   We talk to King about her career playing for the Panthers, touch on her playing career professionally overseas and discuss the Panthers success this season as she is in her first season as an assistant coach on the team.  The women are set to play as the No. 2 seed in this week’s upcoming OVC Basketball Tournament in Evansville.  (Episode 91)

We start up the spring segments of our EIUPanthers Podcast series as we visit with recently hired EIU women’s soccer head coach Dirk Bennett.  Bennett discusses his long relationship with both the local area, Eastern Illinois and Panther soccer as he embarks on his first head coaching role at the collegiate level.   Along we talk a little soccer and some of the styles of play that intrigue him.  Enjoy Episode 90 of EIUPanthers Podcast

Welcome back to our latest episode of EIUpanthers Podcast (No. 89).  Eastern Illinois baseball has had three players selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball Draft most recently with the selection of Trey Sweeney in 2021 by the New York Yankees.  Tim Pyznarski was the first of those three Panthers selected when the Oakland A’s tabbed him with the 15th pick of the 1981 MLB Draft.  He joins us to talk about is time playing at EIU, his path in professional baseball that included a stint in the Big Leagues with the San Diego Padres and what life after baseball has held for him.

This week in our return to the EIUPanthers Podcast series we sit down with Eastern Illinois Head Athletic Trainer Jim Nave. Nave has been in the athletic training business for more than 20 years and discusses what first got him into the profession and what things he has seen evolve over the past two decades.  In addition he talks about how he has built his athletic training staff here at EIU and how his side hobbies of playing in a band and fishing give him a good balanced approach to his job.   (Episode 88)

Our Eastern Illinois Athletics Hall of Fame series continues this week on EIUPanthers Podcast (Episode 87) with Marlise Davidson.  Davidson was a three-sport athlete at Eastern Illinois which is a unique feat in these modern times when athletes excelling at just one sport is hard enough.  Davidson was a standout in the pool as a sprint swimmer, a member of the EIU women’s rugby team playing in a unique event and middle distance runner on the track team helping EIU secure an Ohio Valley Conference Championship.  She talks about all those experiences and her current job in the medical profession.

 

This week on EIUPanthers Podcast we start our Hall of Fame series talking over the next couple of weeks with members of the 2022 Eastern Illinois Athletic Hall of Fame.  First up is Tom Akers who will be inducted as a coach following a dominating career leading the Panthers track and field programs.  During his tenure, EIU won 45 Ohio Valley Conference track and field championships between the men’s and women’s programs covering both indoor and outdoor track.  He coached 20 All-Americans and 26 OVC Athletes of the Year.   Akers talks about his experiences at EIU, what it was like to be previously inducted into the OVC Hall of Fame and what retirement life is now like. (Episode 85)

This week we visit with another of the Panthers new head coaches as EIUPanthers Podcast (Episode 84) sits down with head swimming coach Johnathan Jordan.  Jordan was hired late in the summer and hit the ground running at EIU in early August.  He has a couple of previous head coaching stops and last fall had the unique chance to serve as an Olympic Coach for the team from the Marshall Islands.  Jordan talks about his coaching experiences, what brought him to EIU and how he is adjusting to meeting many of the Panthers swimmers for the first time in the coming days.

Welcome to this week’s episode of EIUPanthers Podcast (No. 83 in our series).  Eastern Illinois pitcher Hayden Birdsong was selected in the sixth round of this year’s Major League Baseball Draft by the San Francisco Giants.  We catch up with Hayden on one of his off days as he is down in Arizona preparing for an abbreviated first season of professional baseball.  He gives us some insight on the draft process, why he chose EIU and what the early days of his indoctrination to the Giants organization have been like.