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Stylish if Schematic Summer-Camp Psychodrama

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The idea of adolescence as a horror story is not new, but it’s given a splashy workout in Charlie Polinger‘s queasily stylish debut feature, in which the swimming pools, lockers rooms and bunk-bed dormitories of a boys’ water polo camp are a puberty petrie dish livid with sinister bacteria. Drawn from experience and benefiting from some standout performances among its well-selected young cast, “The Plague” has a familiar coming-of-age narrative, but stranger, subtler undercurrents of creeping dismay at the men these boys will become when, at this formative age, cruelty chlorinates the water they swim in. 

Sensitive, 12-year-old Ben (Everett Blunck) comes to the Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp in the summer of 2003 as an outsider twice over. He’s not only joining after the second session has started, he’s also a new arrival to the area. And, as we understand from an early conversation with his affable but ineffectual coach (Joel Edgerton, who also produces) a reluctant one: there’s hurt in the studied neutrality of his tone when he describes how his mother uprooted their lives to be with her new lover. Perhaps the wrenching change-up of father figure fuels Ben’s anxiety to fit in, but also maybe that’s just the way he is. When one of the kids’ endless games of would-you-rather makes him choose between “not fucking a dog but having everyone think you did, or fucking a dog and no one knows,” Ben opts for, well, screwing the pooch. 

In any wolf pack, the Alpha is obvious and even among these cubs, Jake (a superb Kayo Martin) is easily identifiable as the ringleader. Deceptively cherubic beneath a shock of tousled strawberry blonde hair, and wearing a surprisingly adult expression of skeptical watchfulness, Jake is initially friendly enough to the newcomer — at least once Ben begins answering to the nickname “Soppy,” devised after Jake picks up on his very minor speech impediment. 

There’s an easier target for Jake’s lazy but keen-eyed ridicule. Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) was presumably already an oddball — into magic tricks and solo flailing dance moves and lurching non-sequitur conversation — even before he developed a disfiguring skin complaint. The angry-looking rash that covers his arms and torso is probably some sort of eczema or contact dermatitis, but the boys are still of an age to be fascinated by lepers and curses and so Jake declares it “the plague.” Eli is ostracized, to the point that all the kids dive for another cafeteria table if he so much as pulls up a chair. 

Good-natured Ben, in the throes of a panicky uncertainty that from the outside is sweetly poignant, if only because it will be gone in a year or a month or a minute, feels for Eli’s predicament— possibly more than the quite contentedly peculiar Eli does for himself. But as he barely has enough social capital to guarantee his own acceptance into Jake’s circle, Ben befriends the outcast cautiously, away from prying eyes. It’s fine to make taboo transgressions if nobody knows about it.

DP Steven Breckon punctuates “The Plague” with interludes of woozy underwater photography, in which the boys’ bodies dagger into the pool and then tread water, resembling so many headless sea horses. Sometimes, while Johan Lenox’s excellent, ’70s horror-inflected, nightmare-choir score reaches a bombastic crescendo, the girls of the synchronized swimming class who share the pool and fire the boys’ crude erotic imaginings, are shown inverted, so they appear to be dancing floatily across the water’s underside surface. These subaquatic symphonies give a touch of the phantasmagoric to a milieu that’s otherwise cleverly recreated from the banal remembered details of an early noughties childhood: the Capri-Suns, the pop tunes, that brief phase where kids believe that smoking kitchen-cupboard nutmeg will get them high.

Perhaps too the subjective nature of Polinger’s memory of a time when the peer-group dynamic was so much more influential than any peripheral authority figure, accounts for why these kids are so often unconstrained by adult supervision. Jake naturally takes advantage of that freedom to continue his offhand reign of terror, one he can maintain without ever really lifting a finger. Almost all of the violence in “The Plague” is self-inflicted and therefore easily disavowed by this tweenaged tyrant – a character so vivid that it’s tempting to imagine a more provocative movie told from the bully’s perspective. But as “The Plague” ramps up to an impressively eerie, body-horror-styled finale, it takes a rather more expected turn toward a significant, if hardly triumphal moment of personal growth for unhappy camper Ben. Teetering on the brink of adult society with its own bewilderingly insidious notions about masculinity and conformity, you can dive in or you can be pushed, and it’s only then you can know if you’ll sink or swim.



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YSU Collegiate Invitational Presented by Southwoods Health Meet Information

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2026 Youngstown State University Indoor Track & Field 14th Annual Collegiate Invitational Meet Presented by Southwoods Health will start at 1 pm | Friday, Jan. 16

Entry Registration Opens up on Direct Athletics :

Friday, December 19 at 5pm

Time Schedule of Events

Running Events start at 1pm

All Field Events start at 1pm

Running Events — Rolling Schedule Women first, Men to Follow

1pm Women 5000M 

Men’s 60M Hurdles Qualifying Round

Women’s 60M Hurdles  Qualifying Round

Women’s 60M Dash  Qualifying Round

Men’s 60M Dash  Qualifying Round

Men’s 5000M

Men’s 60M Hurdles PRELIMS

Women’s 60M Hurdles PRELIMS

Women’s 60M Dash PRELIMS

Men’s 60M Dash PRELIMS

Women’s Mile Run 

Men’s Mile Run

Women’s 400M

Men’s 400M

Women’s 60M Hurdles FINALS

Men’s 60M Hurdles FINALS

Women’s 60M Dash FINALS

Men’s 60M Dash FINALS

Women’s 500M Dash FINALS

Men’s 500M Dash FINALS

Women’s 800m

Men’s 800m

Women’s 200M Dash

Men’s 200M Dash

Women’s 3000M Run 

Men’s 3000M Run

Women’s 1600M Relay

Men’s 1600M Relay

Field Events Start at 12noon

Seeded Women’s Pole Vault

Seeded Men’s Pole Vault

Unseeded Women’s Pole Vault

Unseeded Men’s Pole Vault

Women’s High Jump–Men’s High Jump to follow

Women’s Weight Throw–Men’s Weight Throw to follow

Men’s Shot Put–Women’s Shot Put to follow

Men (West Pit) and Women (East Pit)

Long Jump–Triple Jump follow 20 minutes upon completion of Long Jump

**Finals in field events will consist of the top Nine marks from the qualifying rounds.**

Meet : Open NCAA sanctioned Indoor Track & Field Competition.

Timing: Fully automatic FinishLynx system

Location: The Watson and Tressel Training Site (WATTS) on the YSU campus. The WATTS features a full-length Shaw Sportexe Power Blade HP+ synthetic turf system football field, a 300-meter state-of-the-art mondo track surface, two long-jump pits, a high-jump pit, four batting cages, protective netting, training room and locker rooms.

GPS address: 651 Elm St. | Youngstown, OH 44555

Entries: Entries are due by Tuesday, January 13 by 7pm on Direct Athletics, consisting of event entries with best marks from the previous year or realistic projected marks. All entries will be done on-line at www.directathletics.com.

Please visit the Direct Athletics website at your earliest convenience in order to familiarize yourself with how the entry process works.

Also, please limit FIVE athletes per event. If you have an event with more than five quality athletes, please text Brian Gorby at (330) 519-7591 and we’ll help to get more entry’s added, if needed.

We always try to help accommodate additional team /individual additional Entry’s.

**Note: Please check YSUsports.com after the entry deadline for changes or adjustments to the meet time schedule!

Internet Entry Lists: Final entry lists will be posted on our website, YSUsports.com on Thursday, January 15. Please check to make sure your athletes are entered correctly. If there are mistakes or scratches, please email bdgorby@ysu.edu & ysutrackmeets@gmail.com .

Entry Fees: $ 500 per each team, men &  women genders are separate, consisting of 10 or more individuals in unlimited events are paid online, when you complete Entry’s on Direct Athletics or $ 25 per individual event entry & paid online at Direct Athletics.

ENTRY FEES

$ 25 per ENTRY (i.e. 2 events entered would be $ 50 )  Entry fees must be paid in advance online when you enter on DirectAthletics (all major credit and debit cards accepted).

Relay only Entry’s $ 7 per runner for a total of $ 28 per relay team. 

REFUND POLICY

Outside of meet cancellation, there is a strict NO REFUND policy on entry fees.

Absolutely no refunds will be processed due to scratches, change of plans, inability to travel, illness, injuries, etc.

Spikes: ONLY 1/4 inch or shorter pyramid spikes will be allowed and all spikes will be checked prior to events. NO pin or needle spikes, spike elements, or any other type of spike will be allowed.

High Jump: All high jump competitions will be conducted on the Mondo surface.

Sections/Heats/Flights: Flights will be seeded by distance with best marks in the latest sections/flights.

Finals in field events will consist of the top nine marks from the qualifying rounds.

There will be prelims and finals in the 60 and 60h. All other races will be run as sections against time with the fastest heats being run first.

Implement Weigh-In: 30 minutes prior to event at the Throws area.



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Texas A&M volleyball advances to national championship with sweep of Pitt

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KBTX) – Texas A&M head coach Jamie Morrison and his squad have fought through the postseason for the ability to practice together one more time, he said.

This edition of Aggies will get the maximum number of practices a team can hold.

Thursday, third-seeded A&M swept No. 1 seed Pitt (29-27, 25-21, 25-20) to punch its first-ever ticket to the NCAA Tournament national title game inside Kansas City’s T-Mobile Center.

The Aggies will face Southeastern Conference-mate Kentucky Sunday at 2:30 p.m. for a shot to hoist a national championship trophy.

“This is crazy,” middle blocker Ifenna Cos-Okpalla said. “This is an absolute crazy experience. We have had faith in ourselves all year, from the first game of the season. We knew that we were capable of this, but now living it, like, ‘Wow.’ This is insane. It’s really cool.”

Outside hitter Kyndal Stowers paced the Aggies with 16 kills, followed by Logan Lednicky’s 14. Pitt’s Olivia Babcock was the match’s leading attacker with 22 kills.

A&M dominated the service line through the match, which included six service aces.

The Aggies went hit-for-hit with Pitt through an opening set that saw 17 ties and eight lead changes. Pitt weathered four Aggie set points, and had two of their own, before A&M finally put Set 1 away with a kill from Stowers.

Pitt put together an 8-0 run through the middle of the second set to take a 15-11 lead, but the Aggies immediately countered with their own 9-2 run to pull the match back in their favor. A 4-0 run ultimately put the set on ice, giving the Aggies a 2-0 lead.

A&M has built upon the experiences of the season and this set is was no different. In the Aggies’ Elite Eight win over Nebraska, the Cornhuskers put together an 8-1 run through the middle of the marathon fourth set that the Aggies ultimately dropped. Thursday, they cut off the skid before it cost them a set.

“We were like, ‘Hey, we’re not doing that again,’” Stowers said. “’They’re going on a run right now. We’re going to recognize that, props to them for what they’re doing, but we are going to go respond and we’re not going to let that keep happening.”

A&M closed out the third set on a 5-1 run to claim the match.

The Aggies hit .382 to Pitt’s .344 in the match.

“I’m proud of our team just because we talk a lot about staying present and enjoying moments and I thought, in all of those moments, we enjoyed every single second of it,” Morrison said. “Every single time we were pushed, we talked a lot about responses, and we had a response and that’s all you can ask for in these moments.”

The Aggies will be out for revenge Sunday, as Kentucky is the only squad that downed the Aggies in SEC play this season in a 3-1 Wildcat win in Reed Arena. It will be the first time in the history of the tournament two SEC teams will face each other in the championship game.

“Y’all keep hearing, ‘Why not us?’” Lednicky said. “Like, literally, ‘Why not us?’ I think we are considered the underdog in a lot of moments, just because we haven’t been here before. But we know we have all the right pieces so, ‘Why not us?’”

KBTX reporter Dylan Chryst Watkiss contributed to this report from Kansas City, Mo.



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Two Rams Named to the CSC Academic All-District Team

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – The 2025-26 Academic All-District® Women’s Volleyball Teams, selected by College Sports Communicators, recognize the nation’s top student-athletes for their combined performances on the court and in the classroom. The CSC Academic All-America® program separately recognizes honorees in four divisions — NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III and NAIA.
 
The CSC Academic All-District® teams include the student-athletes listed at the links above.

Academic All-District® honorees were considered for advancement to the CSC Academic All-America® ballot.

For WSSU, Aria Caldwell and Zoe Chesson were named to the team.

Student-athletes selected as CSC Academic All-America® finalists are denoted with an asterisk and will advance to the national ballot to be voted on by CSC members. First-, second- and third-team Academic All-America® honorees will be announced Jan. 13, 2026.

The Division II and III CSC Academic All-America® programs are partially financially supported by the NCAA Division II and III national governance structures to assist CSC with handling the awards fulfillment aspects for the 2025-26 Divisions II and III Academic All-America® programs. The NAIA CSC Academic All-America® program is partially financially supported through the NAIA governance structure.



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Olivia Babcock Named Back-To-Back AVCA National Player of the Year

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KANSAS CITY – The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) named Olivia Babcock the 2025 AVCA National Player of the Year on Friday. Babcock becomes just the fifth player in the award’s history to earn the honor in back-to-back seasons. Additionally, she was honored as the inaugural AVCA Rightside Hitter of the Year, an award introduced this season.

Babcock once again swept the sport’s top individual accolades in 2025, earning AVCA National Player of the Year, ACC Player of the Year and AVCA East Coast Region Player of the Year honors. She is the only player in Pitt history to be named a three-time AVCA First Team All-American and was recently selected as the Pittsburgh Regional Most Outstanding Player after leading the Panthers to their fifth consecutive National Semifinal.

Earlier this season, Babcock set the program’s single-match kills record with 45 against North Carolina. She is the only player in NCAA volleyball this year to reach that mark and the first since Cincinnati’s Jordan Thompson recorded 50 kills against UConn on Nov. 3, 2019.

Anchoring the Pitt offense, Babcock averaged personal-best marks of 5.17 kills per set and 2.09 digs per set. She earned AVCA National Player of the Week honors earlier this season and was named ACC Offensive Player of the Week five times during the 2025 campaign.



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Men’s Volleyball Individual Match Tickets On Sale

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HONOLULU – Individual match tickets for the 2026 University of Hawai’i men’s volleyball season are currently on sale. Tickets may be purchased at www.etickethawaii.com or at the Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center box office (Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.). 
 
Season tickets are still on sale starting as low as $150.  Click here to purchase season tickets.
 
In addition, several promotions are also available for individual match tickets.
 
Save & Serve Wednesdays: $5 Tickets available while supplies last
Military: 30% off all matches & 50% off on April 17th match
Hawai’i Hero’s Night: 50% off for First Responders on January 8th match
*All special offers are based on availability and only in select seating areas.
 
Link to purchase individual games online: https://hawaiiathletics.evenue.net/events/MVBI
 
Individual Ticket Prices:
Lower Level (only single seats available)
Lower Level Sideline – $25
Lower Level Baseline 
        Adult – $24
        Senior citizen (65 and over) – $20
        Youth (ages 4-High School) – $15
 
Upper Level Sideline
        Adult – $20
        Senior citizen (65 and over) – $15
        Youth (ages 4-High School) – $10
Upper Level Baseline
        Adult – $17
        Senior citizen (65 and over) – $10
        Youth (ages 4–High School) – $8
 
 

#HawaiiMVB

 
 
 



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Kalei Edson, Kamille Gibson Join Houston Volleyball

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HOUSTON – Junior setter Kalei Edson and junior outside hitter Kamille Gibson have signed to join Houston Volleyball for the 2026 season, Head Coach David Rehr announced Thursday.
 
“We are really excited to add two players that have played at a high level for two seasons,” Rehr said. “Kalei will compete as our setter while Kamille will make an impact on either pin. This is just the beginning for the 2026 volleyball team.”
 
KALEI EDSON | SETTER | JUNIOR | AUBURN
Edson arrives in Houston following two seasons with the Auburn Tigers. She played in all of the team’s 28 matches in 2025, contributing the second most assists on the team with 482, an average of 4.72 per set. Edson also added 177 digs, 19 aces and five double-doubles throughout the season. In 2024, she earned the SEC Freshman of the Week honor on Oct. 14 and excelled at the service line, leading her team with 30 aces at a rate of 0.32 aces per set. 
 
Overall, Edson has 956 assists in 54 career matches, also recording 49 aces and 331 digs.
 
Edson collected numerous prep and club accolades, including USA Volleyball Junior National All-America and 2023 USAV GJNC All-Tournament Team honors. She was also a 3A All-State and All-South Region honoree and a PrepVolleyball First Team All-State selection. Ranked as the #9 overall prospect in Illinois, Edson was the #3 setter in the country. Across her prep career, she posted over 700 assists along with 800 kills, 100 aces and 100 blocks. 
 
KAMILLE GIBSON | OUTSIDE HITTER | JUNIOR | OKLAHOMA
Gibson, a two-year contributor at Oklahoma after a season at Tennessee, brings a significant offensive mind to Houston while also being a prolific presence on defense. Across two seasons, she tallied 421 kills along with 97 blocks for 500.5 points. Primarily a right-side, Gibson averaged 2.29 kills per set while at Oklahoma. 
 
Last season, Gibson posted 194 kills for a .387 kill percentage while adding 60 blocks. She played in 26 of the Sooner’s 27 matches and started in 16, missing just eight sets across the entire season. 
 
A Crossroads, Texas, native, she prepped at Braswell High School while playing club for TAV. She finished her high school career with 1,161 kills, 500 digs and 137 blocks and was named to the District 5-6A first team in 2021 and to the second team in 2020. 
 
SUPPORT YOUR COOGS
Fans can make a direct impact on the success of Houston Volleyball by providing NIL opportunities or by joining the Point Houston Club which provides financial support directly to Houston Volleyball for needs beyond its operating budget.
 
STAY CONNECTED
Fans can receive updates by following @UHCougarVB on X, formerly known as Twitter, and catch up with the latest news and notes on the team by clicking LIKE on the team’s Facebook page at UHCougarVBFans also can follow the team on Instagram at @UHCougarVB.
 

– UHCougars.com –





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