Photo Story Final Project

I completed this photo story for my Foundations of Photojournalism course's final project. Enjoy!

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James greets me with his signature fist bump before unloading his car full of equipment from the weight room for an outdoor workout. James has always been flexible when it comes to his job as a strength and conditioning coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the past five years, James Ayscue has juggled coaching many Carolina varsity teams. This year, on top of making adjustments for men’s basketball, men’s tennis, women’s rowing, men’s and women’s diving, and women’s field hockey, James adapts to changes in his job due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s been tough because there are times when you feel like you’re not able to give as much as you normally can to some teams but having great help from part time assistants and interns has made the process better,” James said. “We’re along the ride for all the ups and downs and the athletes affect us just as much as anyone else involved and you love being a part of it.”

James speaks about recovery with field hockey players Abby Pitcairn and Cassie Sumfest, who have both suffered injuries and surgeries in the past. James contributes heavily to Carolina Athletics’ family culture by being an approachable and compassionate figure for his student-athletes, especially following injury. Even through a pandemic, James wants to make time for his student-athletes and stay connected. “It’s part of why I wanted to get into coaching is to build lasting relationships in which athletes can trust me to have their best interest in heart in the weight room as well as in life,” James said. “I genuinely view a lot of my athletes as extensions of my family.”

Abby lies face down in agony as James rolls a weighted cylinder across her calf. This is called body tempering, a form of soft tissue mobilization to help increase her range of motion. James can only see a few athletes at a time for recovery sessions due to the weight room’s COVID regulations, but Abby and Cassie try to see James weekly so they can feel their best for training and games. “The athletes themselves have done an even better job of holding themselves accountable which has made the process so much better.”

Equipment sits in the trunk of James’ car after the UNC Field Hockey Team’s outdoor workout at Karen Shelton Stadium. James will sanitize the equipment again before returning it to the weight room in Loudermilk Center for Excellence. In previous years the field hockey team would lift in the weight room, but this year’s team workouts are outside for social distancing, and the equipment must be cleaned between each use. “The most challenging part about strength coaching through a pandemic is getting into a flow during workouts because of all the cleaning,” James said.

UNC field hockey player Katie Dixon laughs with James as he leads the team through a cool-down stretch after their workout. This is James’ second year as the head strength and conditioning coach for the field hockey team. “I think I had maybe watched a total of ten minutes of field hockey before taking over training the team,” James said. “COVID was hard because we were right in the middle of off-season training and I was starting to feel like we were making some great strides in lifting and to have to stop and not see the girls for five months was tough. The group we have though is just great and they are such a fun team to work with."

James writes the diving team’s workout plan on the whiteboard. This year has been an adjustment because each team has different rules and strategies regarding COVID. “It’s been different and a challenge but it’s also been pretty cool to see how coaches and athletes have adjusted and changed to adapt to still be able to get productive and quality work done,” James says.

Fellow strength coach Jordan Conner records video tutorials of James for a class he teaches. The class was originally scheduled for in-person instruction, but was moved online when UNC switched to remote learning in the first month of the semester. “At first, I tried out a couple different options to still give the students as close to a real-world experience and eventually settled on one that I think really helped them get the most of the information that we could get given the situation,” James said.

James corrects UNC Men’s Tennis player Ben Sigouin’s form during a one-on-one session. “I think it is important for people to understand how much strength coaches have invested in the lives of the athletes they train,” James said. “I still keep in contact with a lot of my former athletes just to see how life is going. Even though we aren’t the sport coaches we still coach for a lot of the same reasons and it is such a rewarding feeling to have lasting relationships with the athletes you have worked with.”

Despite the challenges and changes, James remains thankful for the semester he’s had at UNC and hopeful for the spring semester. “I hope that the development and distribution of a vaccine can maybe have us getting back to some resemblance of normalcy by April or May,” James said. “It is tough and we may never quite get back to how things used to be but I am an ever optimist so I like to think that sooner rather than later we’ll be out of this mess and get back to a normal college experience for everyone at UNC.”