In February, the UChicago robotics team won the Super Bowl of robotics—Harvard University’s MakeHarvard robotics competition.  MakeHarvard is not a typical, run-of-the-mill robotics competition: it’s the largest 24-hour “makeathon” for graduate and undergraduate students in the world. Unlike a typical robotics competition, which allows participants to bring a built robot, a makeathon is a competition that allows participating teams a set amount of time—24 hours, in this case—to build and present working prototypes of devices based on a common topic given by the judges.   This ye ..read more

When I was first told about a soccer shirt swap event being hosted by a music label at a local record shop, I was somewhat perplexed. I had always viewed sport and music as domains with immense cultural significance, but their significances had existed independently. Combining two distinctly different things in such a novel way seemed odd to me. When I told my friend about “Kit Swap,” his response made it clear that I wasn’t alone in my confusion. “A soccer event at a record shop? What does that even mean?” It was this confusion, which soon became an insatiable curiosity, that led me to the fr ..read more

Kim Ng became a trailblazer in professional sports in November 2020 when the Miami Marlins hired her as their general manager (GM), making her not only the first woman in North American sports history to be named to the position, but also the first East Asian GM in Major League Baseball (MLB) history. However, this was far from the beginning of her lengthy career in the baseball world. In a sit-down interview with The Maroon, Ng detailed the steps she took to earn the role of GM, the challenges she faced along the way, and some of the highlights of her historic career.  Ng began her time ..read more

The University of Chicago’s women’s cross country team has enjoyed a great deal of success in recent years. Coming into the 2023 season ranked second in the country, the Maroons started strong and held the No. 1 ranking for multiple weeks before ultimately placing third in the NCAA national championship.  While the men’s cross country team didn’t have as obviously impressive of a season, finishing second-to-last in their national championships, they placed third in their UAA conference tournament, with graduate student Jack Begley winning the tournament altogether. They were also able to ..read more

There’s a Scrabble champion amongst us! UChicago fourth-year Cooper Komatsu recently competed in the 12th Annual Crescent City Cup, a 20-game Scrabble tournament hosted in New Orleans. The tournament took place over the course of three days. Despite a flight mishap resulting in two missed games, he ended the tournament placing second! Komatsu started playing Scrabble at just five-years-old, and by eight, he was already playing competitively against adults. Starting at a young age allowed him to develop a strong grasp of two- and three-letter words, a very useful asset in the game. Komatsu cite ..read more

Chicago’s newest LGBTQ+ RSO, Out For Business, has carved out a niche not just for LGBTQ+ students in business, but is becoming a special home for LGBTQ+ student-athletes. Out of the nine members on the current board, four are athletes, including President third-year Cami Cox, a member of the women’s volleyball team.  OFB was founded by Erin Ku, a Business Economics major and Data Science minor who graduated this past fall and is working at the Mergers and Acquisitions group within Investment Banking at RBC Capital Markets.  Ku is no stranger to the business community at UChicago, an ..read more

UChicago student. Math whiz. Professional baseball player for the Chicago Cubs. One person being all three seems paradoxical. But that’s exactly what Wilson Cunningham is: a paradox. He didn’t touch a baseball in his freshman or sophomore year of high school, yet managed to get drafted by an MLB team just two years later. He is attending college and has rigorous academic commitments, yet continues to train professionally with the Cubs at the same time. He is extremely accomplished and decorated with achievements across fields, yet incredibly humble and one of the nicest people you could ever m ..read more

“Here’s the 0-1…This is gonna be a tough play, Bryant—the Cubs—WIN THE WORLD SERIES! Bryant makes the play! It’s over! And the Cubs have finally won it all!” If you were in Chicago on November 2, 2016, chances are you probably heard some iteration of this call. That was the Chicago Cubs breaking their 108-year World Series drought. What we didn’t know at the time, however, is that Newton’s third law holds true, particularly for Chicago sports teams. For every breaking of a drought, another drought must take its place.  The Cubs “dynasty” under Joe Maddon made successive postseason appeara ..read more

Chicago Bears fans had a lot to be excited about going into 2023. The front office had made some promising offseason moves, and the stage was set for Justin Fields to finally propel the Bears into success after years of failure. In typical Bears fashion, the 2023 season got off to an abysmal start. Nobody expected a perfect start, but at the same time, nobody expected just two wins from their first nine. Murmurs of tanking began, and as with most underperforming teams, the quarterback shouldered the majority of the blame. Unfortunately for Fields, much of the criticism has been warranted. Desp ..read more

It’s a familiar sight: someone standing up as they whiz by you, likely leaving you with a nice view of a black or maroon backpack with a UChicago “C” on it. Many students have probably experienced this throughout the first half of autumn quarter. It’s left The Maroon wondering just why student-athletes are so obsessed with their electric scooters. While many options are available to get around campus, such as Lyfts, Divvy bikes, and campus shuttles, scooters have long been strangely popular, especially among athletes. Why is this? There are a few different reasons athletes favor scooters. Whil ..read more