Interview by Christina Winnegar | September 14 2026 Early mornings before school, the previous night’s National Hockey League (NHL) highlights unfold on SportsCentre. Growing up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, he found the morning recap his first connection to everything that happened while he slept. By recess, Nick Bowins and his friends had mini sticks in their hands. The snow covering the schoolyard became part of the game as they played until it was time to return to class. Later, hockey followed him home through NHL video games, which filled the hours before his parents took him to the ice rink for practice or a game of his own. He absorbed every part of it. He knew the players and remembered the statistics lined with their names, carrying what he had watched that morning into conversations with his friends throughout the day. “Everything was hockey, hockey, hockey,” Bowins recalled. At that age, Bowins only knew that he wanted the game to remain part of his future. He could not have known that the habit of searching for hockey information and sharing what he found would eventually help others build futures in the sport. Before he could help anyone else find a way in, Bowins had to search for his own. A search that led him to the University of Waterloo in Ontario, where five co-op experiences appeared to offer five chances to begin. Then he logged into Waterloo’s co-op platform for the first time. At a university better known for fields far beyond sports, he had plenty of directions he could take. Hockey was nowhere on the screen. So true to his nature, he began looking beyond the platform for a way into the industry. The opportunity brought him back to the Owen Sound Attack, the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) team he had grown up supporting. Bowins secured an internship with the organization, working across marketing and social media before transitioning to a part-time role. The experience gave him his first place inside the game, but his career would not follow a straight line through hockey. Bowins eventually moved into the technology industry and spent about five years as Vice President of Operations at ShyftLabs. During his tenure, the company grew from five employees to 200. Part of his impact was hiring more than 100 people and reviewing an immeasurable number of resumes while leading much of its human resources and operations work. At the same time, he continued building Hockey Collective, a social media page with a strong following on Instagram that reached approximately 450,000 followers at its peak. Over time, though, posting highlights and debating NHL stars' abilities no longer felt fulfilling. Bowins wanted to create something more useful. “How can I find something that’s maybe a little bit more meaningful or helps people?” he remembered asking himself. The answer sat at the intersection of the two worlds he already deeply understood. Bowins combined the audience-building experience he gained through Hockey Collective with the hiring knowledge he developed at ShyftLabs and launched a brand built through passion: Working in Hockey. The idea was straightforward: help people find jobs in the game. During its first week, the platform attracted approximately 1,000 Instagram followers. An early listing for a podcast editor with Spittin’ Chiclets was shared to a large audience, helping the page reach 2,000. A week later, after Bowins posted several internships, it climbed to 3,000. “I was like, ‘Ok, there might be something here,’” he said. Two years later, Working in Hockey had grown far beyond an Instagram job board. Bwoins gathered open positions from across North America into a newsletter sent each Monday afternoon, reducing the time job seekers spent scrolling individual team and job board websites. Select openings also appeared on social media for particularly appealing postings. The brand later expanded to include a podcast and in-person events that connect aspiring professionals with those already working in the sport. The consolidation matters in an industry where an opening may disappear almost as quickly as it appears. Teams often close applications within a week or two, so someone who does not check individual career pages every day may miss a position that could have been right for them. Working in Hockey is designed to eliminate some of that “doom scrolling” and place as many opportunities as possible in front of job seekers at once. Only a fraction of the openings reach social media. Bowins uses those posts when a team requests extra help or when he believes a position deserves greater visibility. The newsletter is intended to be as comprehensive as possible. The platform grew to approximately 80,000 followers and 20,000 newsletter subscribers while Bowins dedicated only about a handful of hours a week to it. At first, he found nearly every opening himself. Now, he said, he shares at least half of the jobs, teams or people that are sent to him within the industry. Sometimes a listing comes directly from a hiring manager or human resources department. Other times, an employee sees an internal announcement and sends it to Bowins in hopes that a stronger or more diverse group of candidates will find it. Executives, coaches, general managers and agents have also contacted him simply to say they believe in the work he is doing in the space. That response has been one of the greatest surprises of building the brand. “The number of people–executives with teams, coaches, GMs, agents, people far more powerful and connected than me–reaching out saying, ‘Hey, man, this is cool. You’re helping people,’” Bowins said. “That’ll never not feel surreal.” The shift represents more than the platform’s growing visibility. To him, it reflects how clearly people across sports remember the opportunity that once opened a door for them. “There are so many qualified people that it takes a break,” Bowins said. “That break can be knowing somebody. That break can be sitting beside somebody in the rink at the right time. That break can be a post going viral on social. Whatever it is, everybody has a break.” As the platform grew, another experience showed him how difficult it could be for people trying to set their work apart from the rest. He was offering resume reviews at a career fair when nearly 250 students and young professionals formed a single-file line in front of his table. Bowins was not there to hire anyone. Two Major League Baseball (MLB) organizations were positioned on either side of him, yet neither had a person waiting to speak with them. One representative looked at Bowins’ line and called it amazing. Bowins saw one person seated across from him and a line of 249 others waiting for their chance. “No, this sucks,” he remembered responding. “This sucks for 249 people.” He could offer each person only a few minutes. The experience left him questioning whether there was a better way for aspiring professionals to introduce themselves and build genuine relationships within the industry. Working in Hockey’s events was inspired as an answer to this problem. Bowins aims for a two-to-one ratio: for every two attendees hoping to enter the industry, one person in the room already works within it. That balance prevents an event from becoming another long line of those competing for the attention of only a few professionals. The first events brought approximately 100 people together at New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders games. Then, shortly after Bowins left his technology career to pursue Working in Hockey full-time, more than 400 people attended an event held in June 2026 at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Approximately 150 people had registered by the time Bowins left his day job. With the freedom to focus on promoting the event and contacting people, he spent the next two weeks advancing it. Final attendance more than doubled, despite the gathering taking place on the eve of the NHL draft, when many of the people he had hoped to include were already occupied with the league's business. Some of the industry’s most established figures purchased tickets themselves and arrived ready to help those trying to follow them into the sport. Bowins had imagined a room where access would not be limited to whoever reached the front of a line first. In Toronto, he watched that room fill with more than 400 people. The turnout was especially meaningful because it brought the idea back to Ontario, where his own search had begun. “My whole philosophy with Working in Hockey is just building things that I wish I had,” Bowins said. “I wish I had a consolidated way to view jobs. Now there is one.” Choosing to leave his full-time job meant betting that the platform could become more than a successful side project. Bowins was working long, grueling days in technology, fitting job posts into brief breaks and answering messages late at night. He routinely declined invitations to conversations and industry events because there was no more room in his schedule. His mentor, the CEO of ShyftLabs, had consistently shown him the value of betting on himself. Eventually, Bowins decided he needed to do the same. “If I only put half of my effort into this, it’s only ever going to be half of a thing,” he said. “If I can put my full effort into it, I know it can be a full, self-sufficient thing.” Working in Baseball became an early test of whether the model could extend beyond the sport in which Bowins had spent his life. Baseball was a natural first expansion. He grew up supporting the Toronto Blue Jays, while his wife Samantha’s family is devoted to the New York Yankees. With his wife working for Jomboy Media, the sport remains a constant in their home. More importantly, Bowins already had genuine relationships within the industry. Authenticity remains a boundary for any future expansion: He does not want to position himself as the face of a sport he does not understand or enter a space in which he cannot offer meaningful connections. The baseball landscape also requires its own approach. Hockey has seven NHL organizations in Canada, while MLB has only one Canadian club. Each sport has a distinct audience and professional network. Bowins can repeat the basic recipe, but he cannot assume that every ingredient transfers unchanged. Even with only about one post per week, Working in Baseball reached approximately 31,000 followers. The response showed Bowins that the same need existed beyond hockey. “Did it work because it’s hockey? Did it work because I know people in hockey? Or did it work because it just works?” Bowins said of the initial experiment. “So far, knock on wood, I think the recipe is repeatable across other sports.” The numbers have continued to grow. Bowins measures the platform's success by the connections it creates and the trust it retains from teams and companies. Some of the clearest proof arrived through messages from two places he had never been. One came from Des Moines, Iowa. The other came from a small town in Alberta, Canada. Both people cited Working in Hockey as the reason they found jobs in the sport. He had never met either person before. Yet the company he created from his own journey had reached across borders and helped two strangers with completely different backgrounds begin careers within the game. Their messages carried the story back to where it began. The boy from a small Ontario town had once searched for every piece of hockey he could find. His work was now reaching people far beyond that town and helping them find futures of their own. The impact quickly surpassed the modest goal he had set when the project began. “When I first started this, I thought if I could help five people and have 1,000 followers, that would be an awesome side project,” Bowins said. “We cracked those pretty quickly.” For those still waiting for their own break, he encourages them to meet people in person and make their work visible. Both require a willingness to act before someone else opens the door. Online relationships can start a conversation, but Bowins believes meeting face-to-face gives that connection greater weight. Attending an industry event is one route. Going to a game and being willing to introduce yourself is another. Some of his most valuable conversations have happened during ordinary trips to the rink because proximity creates possibilities that are difficult to replicate through a screen. “The amount of stories and connections that I make when I go to a rink for a random game– it’s crazy,” he said. “I hear and learn and get to be part of 100 times more things there in person than you do online.” Bowins believes people must give their work a chance to be seen. A writer can publish an article. Those pursuing digital media can post their work or the accompanying analytics. Each project gives a hiring manager another opportunity to recognize the name attached to it. That recognition can matter when an opening attracts 500 or 1,000 applicants. A familiar name enters the process with evidence of what the applicant can already do. “Whatever it is, you have to post about it,” he said. “You have to put yourself out there.” He encourages job seekers to approach the process with the same initiative. Reaching out first can start a relationship, while tracking applications and interviews can show which parts of the search need to change—with more qualified candidates and available positions waiting to be discovered, leaving too much to chance. Bowins is especially direct about internships and part-time work. During the eight weeks before his interview with HAZZE Sports, he shared 250 internship opportunities through the Working in Hockey newsletter. The full-time positions still received more clicks. He understands why. Relocation with limited pay can make an internship hard to accept, especially for someone with multiple jobs to support themselves. Bowins held several jobs while building his own career. When circumstances allow, he believes those roles can provide access that an impressive title cannot. An ice crew position places someone inside the rink. A game night role builds relationships with people across an organization. Even an opportunity outside someone's preferred department can add experience that strengthens the next application. “Those are the door openers: the internships, the part-time roles,” he said. “It’s a way into the industry. It gets you in the rink.” Getting inside creates the opportunity. What someone does determines where it can lead. He sees resourcefulness and communication as qualities that separate candidates once the interview process begins. When someone encounters a problem they have never solved, he wants them to research it and return with possible answers. They must also be able to explain their thinking and advocate for what they can contribute. “That is the single biggest separator once you're in the interview stages,” Bowins said. “It's how you're able to communicate and tell your story and what you want to do.” The advice reflects Bowins’ own path. His first step into hockey came through an internship with the local OHL team. He had grown up watching. Years later, his experience outside the sport helped him build a business and, more importantly, understand how to get hired. He carried that knowledge back to hockey and created the resource he once needed. Each job he shares makes one more path visible. Every event puts someone in a room they may never have entered alone. Years ago, Bowins opened the University of Waterloo’s co-op platform believing one of its five placements could lead him into hockey. What he found instead was a need for a platform that did not yet exist. Today, tens of thousands of people are searching for the opportunity he once could not find, with Working in Hockey and Working in Baseball. He once searched for his break in the game that shaped his life. Now, he spends each week building one for someone once in his shoes.

Gallery by Lauren Henwood | September 3 2026 Utah Utes vs Idaho Vandals by Lauren Henwood Utah kicked off its 2026 campaign with a dominant 66-14 victory over Idaho, putting together an explosive offensive performance from start to finish. The Utes wasted little time taking control as they opened the season with a statement win. Utah Utes vs Idaho Vandals by Lauren Henwood

Written by Ezzah Rafique | August 17, 2026 New York Fashion Week returns September 10-15, 2026, and the women's Spring Summer 2027 calendar is one of the most packed in recent seasons, with 58 runway shows and 27 presentations spread across six days. New York Fashion Week SS27 at a glance Day Date Shows Thursday September 10 17 Friday September 11 14 Saturday September 12 13 Sunday September 13 13 Monday September 14 19 Tuesday September 15 9 Hosting a show or popup during NYFW? Let's talk. HAZZE MEDIA will be covering New York Fashion Week SS27 across the full week, and our coverage extends past the official calendar. If you are a designer, brand, showroom, or agency hosting a show, presentation, popup, activation, or after-hours event during NYFW, reach out us via email to be included. Thursday, September 10: Catwalks Time Designer 9:30 AM Diane von Furstenberg 10:30 AM TWP 12:00 PM Bad Binch TongTong 12:00 PM Proenza Schouler 2:00 PM Tommy Hilfiger 4:00 PM Kallmeyer 5:00 PM Tory Burch 6:00 PM Christian Siriano 8:00 PM Public School New York Thursday, September 10: Presentations Time Designer 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM Bugatchi 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Mel Usine 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Patrick Taylor 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM New York Men's Day 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM Rùadh 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM Alice + Olivia 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM New York Men's Day 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM LoveShackFancy Friday, September 11: Catwalks Time Designer 10:00 AM Amir Taghi 11:00 AM Michael Kors Collection 1:00 PM Wiederhoeft 2:00 PM Jane Wade 3:00 PM Calvin Klein Collection 4:00 PM Christian Cowan 5:00 PM Monse 6:00 PM Kim Shui 7:00 PM Simkhai 8:00 PM Eckhaus Latta 9:00 PM Rio Friday, September 11: Presentations Time Designer 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Grey's 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM Attersee 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM Milamore Saturday, September 12: Catwalks Time Designer 10:00 AM Altuzarra 11:00 AM Kate Barton 12:30 PM Conner Ives 2:00 PM Anna Sui 3:00 PM 7 For All Mankind 4:00 PM Ashlyn 5:00 PM Prabal Gurung 6:00 PM Bach Mai 7:00 PM Khaite 8:00 PM threeASFOUR 9:00 PM Elena Velez Saturday, September 12: Presentations Time Designer 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM Max Esmail 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM Hikari No Yami Sunday, September 13: Catwalks Time Designer 11:00 AM Area 12:00 PM Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen 1:00 PM COS 2:00 PM Sandy Liang 3:00 PM Magda Butrym 4:00 PM Campillo 5:00 PM Sergio Hudson 5:00 PM Todd Snyder 8:00 PM Grace Ling 9:00 PM Private Policy Sunday, September 13: Presentations Time Designer 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Ossou 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM Dwarmis 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM LeBlancStudios Monday, September 14: Catwalks Time Designer 10:00 AM Ulla Johnson 12:00 PM Fforme 12:00 PM LII 2:00 PM Zankov 3:00 PM Bibhu Mohapatra 3:00 PM Zaldy 4:00 PM Diotima 6:00 PM Carolina Herrera 7:30 PM Luar 9:00 PM LaQuan Smith Monday, September 14: Presentations Time Designer 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM Adeam 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Aisling Camps 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM Benjamin Seidler 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Colleen Allen 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM Don't Let Disco 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM Norma Kamali 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM Tanner Fletcher 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM TTSWTRS 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM Caroline Zimbalist Tuesday, September 15: Catwalks Time Designer 10:00 AM Heirlome 12:00 PM Collina Strada 1:00 PM Andrew Kwon 2:00 PM 6397 3:00 PM Frederick Anderson 4:00 PM Sabyasachi 5:00 PM Thom Browne Tuesday, September 15: Presentations Time Designer 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM Kozaburo 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM Meruert Tolegen A note before you plan around it: this is the tentative calendar published by MODEM. Times move, shows get added, and a few slots are still unclaimed. We'll update this page as the schedule firms up. For brands looking for press coverage to their show, please email: outreach@hazzemedia.com

Written by Nina Kremer | Photo by Makayla Keasler | September 1, 2026 The name Beatrix has roots in the Latin word for voyager, which makes it a fitting stage name for singer-songwriter Arielle Beatrice Kasnetz, as she travels back in time in her sophomore album, “We Swallowed The Sky,” to process one of the most difficult periods of her life. The alternative indie artist is on the rise, garnering over 250 thousand views on TikTok for her haunting music video for the album’s first single, “Ghosts of Tennessee." Coming off of her first-ever tour supporting Nashville-based artist Cece Coakley, Beatrix is now moving into the spotlight, having played her first New York solo show on July 28. She sat down with HAZZE in June to discuss her latest album, its inspiration and what it's like to share personal stories with listeners. She said she may even have more music coming out later this year. Embarking on her solo career was simultaneously a leap of faith and a return to form for the artist who said it was always her dream to be a singer. She said her mom told her she started singing before she could talk, and a young Beatrix found a love for music by performing the “Annie” soundtrack with her karaoke machine. Still, despite studying classical voice at Vanderbilt, she said she considered opting for a more reliable career as a doctor or lawyer. But when the pandemic hit and Beatrix was left alone with ample free time and the guitar her parents had gotten her for her birthday, isolation sparked inspiration. She started writing her own songs for the first time and knew she had found her calling. “When I first started recording demos, I was like so hooked,” Beatrix said. “I was like, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,’ and I never looked back.” Once she was committed to pursuing music professionally, she was determined to put her songs out. The release of her debut single, “Vertigo,” in 2024, sparked conversations with labels, but none offered her a concrete deal. She decided to back her own venture and independently produced her debut album. “I'm gonna put this out, and I'm not gonna wait around for a label, you know, to decide that it's good enough,” Beatrix said she thought at the time. “Like I thought that it was great, and it was done. I did it for a very low budget, but yeah, I just felt like I was 25 and I was like, ‘It's time to start putting things out there and see what happens.” As it happened, the debut album garnered interest from Nice Life Recording Company, which released “We Swallowed The Sky” in April. For her first release with Nice Life, Beatrix was joined by several experienced session musicians like guitarist Harrison Whitford who has worked with Phoebe Bridgers, pianist Zac Rae who has worked with Fiona Apple, pedal steel player Greg Leisz who was worked with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, and string arranger Rob Moose who has worked with Taylor Swift. “We Swallowed The Sky” explores the lasting effects of her most turbulent college-era breakup. Beatrix said pain is a common theme that she likes to explore, using her music to process the visceral feelings and move forward. “It was a really hard time in my life,” Beatrix said. “It was a really devastating breakup, and even all these years later, like it was still coming up in my own relationships. So yeah, it just helped me process some of those lingering emotions.” Beatrix said she didn’t feel intimidated about sharing the songs when she first wrote them, though she experienced a bit of nerves before making her feelings public on the album. Still, she felt the memories were good fodder for musical inspiration, and that it is part of her job to be vulnerable. “I'm proud of my songs, and I'm not like super shy about sharing emotions,” Beatrix said. “I think it like it has to be done if you want to share music that makes you uncomfortable, like that's part of that's what I signed up for.” One popular artist Beatrix cites as songwriting inspiration is Mitski. Beatrix said she finds Mitski’s lyrics equally poetic and accessible, a balance she tries to artfully strike in her own songwriting. She said she admires Mitski’s poignant portrayal of young womanhood and aspires to write similarly impactful music. “I think sadness and pain are easier for me to tap into, generally, than like joy,” Beatrix said. “That sounds so sad, but it's true. I mean, in my day-to-day life, I'm a happy person, but this like really gives me — it's my outlet for all of those, you know, painful things.” Though “We Swallowed The Sky” was produced in Los Angeles, she said the album was sonically inspired by her time living in Nashville. Having been surrounded by country music, she felt inclined to lean toward an indie-Americana sound. Beatrix often traverses new musical territories, describing how she travels between indie, rock and Americana all on the same album, while trying to remain true to her own voice as an artist. As she looks to the future, Beatrix plans to continue sharing her feelings with listeners, this time exploring even more personal themes. She notes that her third album, which she said she is currently writing, is not about a boy. “It's not really about a relationship. So that's new for me,” Beatrix said. “It's more about myself and my faith, and [an] existential crisis, and I'm exploring like death, and yeah more like existential themes. It's more about me.” With her third album, Beatrix is embarking on her next emotional voyage, sharing that she’s writing what she feels compelled to in the moment.

by Whitney Randall | August 26 2026 Diego Pavia, Quarterback, Vanderbilt University College athletics has undergone more change in the past five years than any other period in National Collegiate Athletic Association history. Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) has allowed athletes to profit from their personal brands. The transfer portal has transformed how athletes move between programs. Conference realignment has reshaped historic rivalries and created new power structures across college sports. Meanwhile, revenue-sharing agreements are beginning to redefine the relationship between athletes and universities. With so many changes happening simultaneously, another major shift in college athletics may seem difficult to imagine. But the central change may not come from money, television contracts, or conference expansion. It may come from eligibility, which could reshape how college sports are organized and who gets to compete. The NCAA is considering one of the most significant changes to athlete eligibility rules in decades. The proposed “five-for-five” model would move away from the organization’s traditional five-year eligibility clock and create a system focused primarily on competition seasons rather than calendar years. While the proposal is designed to simplify eligibility and provide athletes with more flexibility, it also raises a larger question: how will college sports change if eligibility becomes the next major point of disruption? Questions about older rosters, experienced transfers, and longer college careers all point to that shift. Most importantly, the proposal comes at a time when eligibility rules are already being challenged outside of the NCAA. Several lawsuits have forced courts to intervene in questions that were previously controlled almost entirely by the NCAA. As the organization attempts to create a new eligibility system, judges across the country are making decisions that immediately impact athletes. The result is a rare moment in college sports where both NCAA policy and the legal system are shaping the future of eligibility. How NCAA Eligibility Has Worked For decades, Division I athletes have competed under what is commonly known as the “five-year clock.” Once a student-athlete enrolled full-time at an NCAA institution, they had five calendar years to complete four seasons of competition. The clock continued running whether an athlete competed, redshirted, transferred schools, or missed time because of injury unless they received a specific waiver. The system was designed around a traditional college athletics model where athletes typically spent four years at one university before either entering the professional ranks or retiring from competition. However, college athletics no longer operates under that same structure. Today, athletes frequently transfer schools multiple times, develop through different levels of competition, and make decisions based on both athletic and financial opportunities. The introduction of NIL has also changed the reason athletes may choose to remain in college. Junior college athletes have faced some of the biggest challenges under the current system. Unlike athletes who begin at NCAA institutions, junior college athletes could lose eligibility based on seasons played before arriving at a Division I program. This created situations where athletes who developed later or took a different path through college sports had fewer opportunities once they reached the Division I level. Exceptions such as medical hardship waivers and the additional season granted during the COVID-19 pandemic provided flexibility, but the overall structure remained mostly unchanged. As college athletics continued evolving, questions grew about whether the eligibility system still matched the reality of modern sports. Why the NCAA Wants Change The push for eligibility reform comes during one of the most unpredictable periods in college athletics history. The transfer portal has changed roster management. Coaches are no longer building teams only through four-year recruiting cycles; instead, experienced players can immediately enter the portal and find new opportunities. NIL has added another layer to those decisions. Athletes now have financial incentives to stay in college, build their personal brands, and continue competing rather than immediately entering professional sports. Conference realignment has also increased pressure on programs to remain competitive. Schools entering larger conferences are investing more heavily in recruiting, facilities, and player development, making every roster decision more important. However, the biggest factor pushing eligibility reform may be the growing number of legal challenges against NCAA policies. For years, eligibility rules were considered internal NCAA regulations. Recently, athletes have argued that some restrictions limit their ability to compete and earn opportunities in a changing college sports environment. As courts have become more involved, the NCAA has faced increasing pressure to reconsider policies that had existed for generations. The Lawsuits Changing the Eligibility Conversation One of the most influential cases came from Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia. Pavia began his college career at New Mexico Military Institute, a junior college, before transferring to New Mexico State and later Vanderbilt. Under NCAA rules, his junior college seasons counted toward his Division I eligibility. Pavia challenged that policy, arguing it unfairly disadvantaged junior college athletes by reducing the number of seasons they could compete at the Division I level. He also argued that losing eligibility limited his ability to benefit from NIL opportunities. A federal judge granted Pavia a preliminary injunction, allowing him to continue competing while the lawsuit continued. The NCAA later provided eligibility relief for athletes in similar situations. The case became significant because it challenged the idea that the NCAA could determine eligibility rules without outside legal review. The conversation continued in July 2026 when athletes from the high school Class of 2022 filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA. The athletes argued they were caught between two different eligibility systems. The Class of 2021 received an additional season because of COVID-19 eligibility relief, while future athletes could potentially benefit from the NCAA’s proposed five-for-five model. The Class of 2022 received neither advantage. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction allowing eligible members of that class another season of competition while the lawsuit proceeds. The decision created additional challenges for athletic departments attempting to plan their rosters. Another lawsuit, Campbell v. NCAA, challenges NCAA age-based eligibility restrictions under federal antitrust law. While the case involves different circumstances, it represents a larger trend of athletes using the court system to challenge NCAA regulations. Together, these cases have increased pressure on the NCAA to create an eligibility system that can withstand legal challenges. What Would Change Under Five-for-Five? The biggest change under the proposal would be removing the traditional five-year eligibility clock. Instead of focusing on how much time has passed since enrollment, the NCAA would focus on seasons of competition. Under the current system, an athlete who spends multiple seasons at a junior college may use eligibility before ever competing in Division I. Under the proposed model, athletes would generally receive five years in which they could compete in up to five seasons. The NCAA believes this would create a simpler and more consistent system. Athletes who develop later, recover from injuries, or begin their careers outside of Division I would have more opportunities to compete. However, the proposal could also create new challenges. How Could This Impact College Sports? If approved, the biggest impact may be felt on recruiting. Older athletes with more experience could remain on college rosters longer, creating fewer opportunities for incoming freshmen. Coaches may prioritize proven transfers over developing younger players. This could especially impact smaller programs that rely on developing athletes over several years. If wealthier programs can consistently attract experienced transfers through NIL opportunities, competitive gaps could grow larger. Roster management could also become more complicated. Coaches would need to balance incoming recruits, returning veterans, scholarship limits, and revenue-sharing agreements. Athletic departments may have to rethink how they plan for the future. Could Athletes Stay in College Longer? One of the biggest questions surrounding eligibility reform is whether athletes will delay professional careers. In previous generations, athletes often left college once their eligibility ended because professional opportunities represented the next step. Today, that decision is more complicated. NIL opportunities can provide significant financial benefits while athletes remain in college. For some athletes, another season competing at the collegiate level may provide more value than entering a professional league immediately. Baseball players may choose another college season rather than entering the minor leagues. Hockey players may delay signing professional contracts while continuing development. Basketball players outside of first-round draft projections may determine that another year of college basketball provides greater financial security. In women’s sports, where professional salaries often remain lower than NIL opportunities, staying in college may provide additional financial and athletic advantages. The decision to turn professional is no longer automatic. Where Things Stand Now The NCAA’s five-for-five eligibility model is still a proposal and has not officially taken effect. The Division I Board has introduced the framework as part of an effort to modernize eligibility rules, but the proposal must continue through the NCAA legislative process before becoming official. At the same time, courts continue influencing eligibility through lawsuits and preliminary injunctions. Decisions in cases like Pavia and the Class of 2022 lawsuit have changed opportunities for athletes before the NCAA completes its own reforms. Because of this uncertainty, schools are preparing for multiple possible outcomes. Athletic departments must make recruiting decisions, manage scholarships, and build rosters without knowing exactly what eligibility rules will look like in the future. Looking Ahead The NCAA’s proposed eligibility changes represent far more than a simple adjustment to one rule. They reflect college athletics’ attempt to adapt to a new era shaped by NIL, the transfer portal, conference realignment, revenue sharing, and legal challenges. The NCAA is attempting to modernize eligibility rules at the same time courts are redefining what those rules can legally require. Until the proposal is finalized, and until the lawsuits work their way through the legal system, athletes, coaches, and schools will continue operating in an environment filled with uncertainty. What ultimately emerges could reshape not only how long athletes compete, but how programs recruit, build rosters, and define the future of college sports Disclaimer: The views, analysis, and opinions expressed in this op-ed are of the writer. All information is for commentary and informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, professional, or investment advice. References to third-party sources and public figures are made for illustrative purposes and do not imply endorsement or verification by HAZZE MEDIA.

Interview by Christina Winnegar | June 29 2026 The first time Luke Prokop tried to say the words he had been carrying for years out loud, they stalled at the edge of his lips. Those words had followed him for years. Through bus rides between rinks. Through the move to Kelowna, British Columbia, at 14-years-old. Through practices, road trips and every version of himself that hockey demanded he become. They remained quiet. Constant yet unspoken. But when it came to finally allowing those feelings of identity to exist outside of his own head, they stopped short. It was late, the house had already gone to sleep, and his family's home was quiet. The kind of quiet that does not leave much room for those reserved thoughts to hide, but leads him to leave nothing behind. Lying in bed, he sent his sister a simple text. He had something to say to her, went up to her, but when he reached her, the words disappeared. “I started crying; she started crying. She had no clue what was going on,” he remembered. Ultimately, he spoke the words that freed what he had been holding on to for so long; he came out to her. Within seconds, he was wrapped in her arms, which he described as the best coming-out experience he could have asked for. Years later, the world would remember the statement Luke Prokop shared publicly. Few would ever know this was where his story truly began. Long before Luke Prokop ever struggled to say those words, another language had already shaped his life. Hockey. In a place like Edmonton, Alberta, the game is not introduced; it is inherited. It is ingrained in the city's culture: the expectation that if you can walk, you will lace up skates. For Prokop, it started early: he grew up with skates on his feet since age 3. His brother played. His father played. His grandfather played. Hockey was not just a decision in the Prokop family; it was a generational direction. And almost immediately, it became a structured lifestyle designed to give the best, to become the best. Not just the expected practices, but additional practices. Not just development, but steps to acceleration past the masses. The kind of upbringing where time is measured less by age and more by progression, what comes next, what needs improvement, what separates potential from reality. The kind of dedication that comes coupled with sacrifice. “It was almost like it was a job to me from 10 years old, when I was just still a little kid in school and getting taken out of school and going to all these tournaments and extra sessions I didn’t want to go to,” he reflected. “But I also wouldn’t be where I am today with him [Prokop’s father] and how hard he pushed me.” At an age when most kids were still figuring out the hobbies or interests that they enjoy, Prokop was already committing to something that required everything. By 14-years-old, that commitment meant leaving home and moving to Kelowna. Nearly 600 miles away from everything he knew, family, familiarity, in an environment designed to sharpen players to accelerate them to the next level. It was necessary for his development, but it was also isolating. And in that period of separation, something else began to surface. At first, it did not arrive as clarity; it arrived as a disconnect to the spaces he grew up in. Locker room conversations did not land the way they were supposed to. The rhythms of adolescence, the shared language, the expected interests, all felt slightly off, just enough to internally take note of, not enough to understand why fully. “The first time those conversations kind of came up, it was like, okay, well, what’s wrong with me? And why am I not feeling the same way as my teammates and my friends at that age?” he remembered. At 14 years old, that period of realization did not come with a resolution; it came packaged with questions born of uncertainty. A couple of years later, the internalization of said feelings became something harder to ignore. “So after kind of understanding what it was and then learning to ignore it when I was probably 16,” Prokop said. “ I think it was like, okay, there’s definitely something different about you, and it’s going to kind of come to a point where you can’t ignore it anymore.” But understanding did not mean acceptance in the world built around the pillars of strength and internalization, not in a space where there was no visible version of what the truth could look like. So it stayed contained and controlled in small, private ways, within the constraints of his phone. There were moments when he tried to explore it, downloading apps, creating profiles, allowing himself brief windows of honesty as he explored away from the world of pressure—then deleted them—repeating the cycle again and again. “Looking back on it, the major thing was I wanted to be able to express myself, and hopefully try to find a partner or something, but at the same time, looking back on it, it’s like, well, if you were you wouldn’t be able to hang out with them unless it was kind of in secret,” Prokop shared. “But the fear of being outed was the main reason why I would delete them after a week or two.” Because in the world of being known, visibility comes at a cost. And for a long time, that cost felt too high. When the calendar year hit 2020, the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, where everything, everywhere, completely shut down, and the one similarity everyone shared was that quarantine was the new normal. With the season shut down and the structure of hockey temporarily paused, Prokop found himself back home, surrounded by his family in a way he had not been in years. There were no daily practices to rush to, no travel schedules to follow, no built-in distractions to keep him focused on anything other than what had continued to reveal itself quietly in the background. A time he noted as a big blessing in his life. Not because of the circumstances themselves, but because of what they allowed to foster. For the first time in a long time, there was space. Space to think, to reflect and to reconnect with the people he had spent years only in passing between seasons. That shift was most noticeable in the relationship with his sister. Before that period, they were not particularly close. Their lives had moved in different directions, interactions limited by schedules that rarely aligned. But during those months at home, that distance completely dissipated. They spent time together as a family in ways they had not before: playing games, staying up late, talking without any urgency to move on to the next topic. “I just felt this connection with my sister that was super strong,” he recalled. With that level of closeness came something he had not had before, the sense that he had someone he could trust with something he had not trusted anyone in his life to hold. One night, his confidence was palpable. Following a text sent while lying in bed, he walked into her room, knowing it was time, even if he did not yet know how to say it. At first, she did not understand what was happening. There were no words to explain it, no context to guide that moment. But then, as the meaning became clear through their bond, her reaction came without hesitation. “She told me she loved me – it was truly the best experience for coming out for the first time that I could have asked for with my sister,” Prokop reflected. After that, the process became more comfortable, but not easy by any means. He began telling members of the family, then close friends, each conversation building on the last. With every person who responded with acceptance, something shifted, not just in how he saw himself, but in how he allowed himself to exist in the spaces where he felt safe. The comfort reflected in the openness in conversations, the willingness to engage and be less guarded in moments with those close to him. But that comfort did not extend everywhere. Because the other part of Prokop’s identity did not know, hockey did not know. By that point, it was not just about managing one identity, but two parts of himself that made him whole. Everything remained the same on the surface, but internally, the gap between those two versions of his life continued to widen. He was stepping into rinks every day, rinks that once felt like home, carrying a weight no one else in that space knew, and that lack of alignment made a lifestyle that had once felt routine feel foreign. It was not about hiding anymore. It was about sustaining something that no longer felt sustainable. By the time Prokop entered the 2020 National Hockey League (NHL) Draft, the path, at least on paper, looked clear for a player of his caliber with strong development and high-level competition—a player who had gone above and beyond on the stat lines. From the outside, it made sense. However, inside, it was more complicated. Some teams showed interest, asked questions, evaluated his game, projected what his career could become, all of the typical. And then there were the ones that passed. At the time, that assessment existed without context. The adversity they were looking for was one they expected to see in performance history, in visible challenges that could be measured and understood. However, what they could not see was the hardest battle that he had been internalizing beneath the surface. “I wanted to be a professional hockey player for as long as I can remember,” Prokop reflected. “And then that thought of trying to tackle that beast of what that was going to be like, and maybe not being able to play hockey. That’s what I had to come to terms with.” The reality he faced did not fit the way players are typically evaluated. It did not show up with statistics or scouting reports, but it shaped everything about how he moved through the sport during that time. When the Nashville Predators announced his name was selected as 73rd overall in the 2020 NHL Draft, the moment carried great significance, even if it did not unfold the way he had imagined growing up. There was no stage, no arena, no formal setting that marked the occasion. Instead, the memory took place in a location very significant to his upbringing. A family-owned restaurant in Edmonton, where meaningful connections gathered to watch the moment Prokop’s dream came to fruition. “I’d ask my agents who they thought would be really interested in me. It was Edmonton and Nashville,” he said. “Sure enough, it ended up being Nashville, which was really cool, because growing up, they’d been my favorite team. My favorite players were on that team.” Once Prokop had gotten the call from Nashville, a celebratory aura took over the room, filled with friends, family, and a couple of coaches who had guided him along the way, as tears, laughs, and nerves were shared on the most perfect draft day amid the COVID-19 pandemic. A moment that reflected all of the sacrifices and dedication put into the dream, all of which had finally paid off. Representing the next step in his career. But even as he progressed professionally, the separation between the two versions of his life remained. If the draft revealed what others could see, the season that followed exposed what they could not. The 2020-21 season was unlike anything players had experienced before. The structure of the bubble ironically eliminated distance while projecting it onto the outside world – between teams, between players, between the personal and the professional. There was no separation for Prokop. The days became repetitive, spaces became limited, and conversations carried on longer than they normally would. And in that fostered environment, things that had and might have stayed contained for much longer did not. A dreaded reality surfaced: rumors. Not directly, not all at once, but enough to be felt. At first, they came through someone else, a teammate on another team, a conversation that reached his ears secondhand. But that distance did not make it easier. If anything, it made it worse because it provided fear from not knowing where it had reached. Or how far it had gone. That uncertainty became a constant. Every day, he walked into the rink without clarity about what had been said, who had heard it, or how it might change the way he was perceived by his teammates or those within the organization around him. “I felt like I was walking on eggshells everywhere I went,” Prokop recalled. The ice, which had always been a place where all other thoughts, feelings and insecurities were left, became another space where the dark cloud of rumors followed him. The feeling no longer existed outside of hockey; it existed within. What was once a sacred space became one surrounded by stress, and performance was no longer the only variable that mattered. After that season, the sense of manageability ended. The silence that had once felt like protection began to feel like something else entirely – something heavier, something that did not stay the way it used to. By the end of the season, the answer was already there. Not fully spoken, but understood. “I ended up leaving that season with the full idea of coming out publicly,” he expressed. “That was a major process in terms of getting myself confident that it was the right decision to do… not knowing how it was going to affect my hockey career was super stressful.” When his agents asked which path he wanted to take – whether he wanted to continue to keep this part of his life private or make it public - Prokop knew the answer. Not because the decision was easy, but because he had reached a point where the alternative felt impossible to continue. “I had around eight months to really think about it,” Prokop said. “My agents wanted me to be 100 percent because once you do it, you can’t really take it back.” There would be no rushing the process. Every conversation, detail and piece to the overall picture mattered. Before anyone else could read his words, the people who had shaped his hockey career would hear them first. So then, one by one, the phone calls began. The NHL, the NHL Players’ Association, Hockey Canada, the Nashville Predators and the Calgary Hitmen. Each conversation carried the weight of the same question that had quietly followed Prokop like a shadow for years: Would hockey still want me if it knew all of me? Instead of uncertainty, he found reassurance. Instead of hesitation, he found support. “Each time I had one of those conversations, everyone was saying, ' This is the right thing to do,” he reflected. Every conversation, every confirmation, chipped away at a fear that had lived with him since he was 16-years-old, downloading dating apps, finding connection, then deleting them out of fear of losing everything he spent his life working towards. Then came the call from Nashville. For Prokop, this one resonated more deeply. Just a year earlier, the Predators had called to tell him they believed in him enough to make him the 73rd overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft. Now, many of those same figures - the executives, coaches, scouts and staff who had welcomed him into the organization - were welcoming him again. One after another, they shared the same sentiments: they were proud of him, they supported him, they were behind him. When the call ended, the emotion had finally caught up to him. “I remember crying on the way home,” he said. “Just knowing that this was going to be okay… that this decision to come out isn’t going to affect my hockey career. I’m still going to be able to play the game I love.” For years, his greatest fear had never been telling people the truth; it was believing the truth might cost him the one thing he had spent his entire life working toward. That drive home was the first time he truly believed he would not have to choose between the two. Still, aside from the conversations that happened and the statement being written, with the support system in place, everything had been prepared for that moment. All that remained of being free was pressing one button. By the morning of July 19 2021, there was nothing left to rewrite. For months, Prokop had carefully worked through every conversation that would make this moment possible. Every phone call answered a question that had lived in the back of his mind for years. Every show of support had chipped away at his greatest fear. Still, knowing he was ready did not make that Monday morning any easier. “The night before, I did not get a wink of sleep at all,” he remembered. The reality of what was about to happen had settled in long before the sun came up. By the time he arrived at his agent’s office, everything had already been prepared. His media manager had logged into his Instagram on her phone. The statement had been finalized. Every word had been reviewed. Every conversation concluded. “I just had to press ‘Post’ on the phone,” Prokop said. “Sit in a chair and kind of watch the chaos ensue from what was about to happen.” He pressed it, then waited. Within minutes, the statement had traveled far beyond the room he was sitting in. Messages poured in from teammates, coaches, executives, friends, reporters and strangers. “I had no clue it was going to be as big as it was,” he said. The response stretched far beyond the hockey community. News organizations around the world had picked up the story—national broadcasts led with it. Athletes from across professional sports voiced their support. Fans shared his words with people they loved. Parents sent the statement to children who were still searching for the courage to tell their own stories. At just 19-years-old, Luke Prokop became the first openly gay player under an NHL contract. Almost overnight, his name became synonymous with trailblazing in history. In the midst of it, he faced a reality that had changed in a matter of minutes. One that had silenced all of the ruminating thoughts, questions and fears that held weight since he discovered his true self. The response of overwhelming support was not perfect because the world had suddenly become perfect. It was powerful because it challenged every possible negative outcome he had quietly carried since he was a teenager. The headlines focused on history, but the headlines could not capture what mattered most to Prokop. When he thought back on that day, he did not remember the articles or television interviews. He remembered something much simpler: He was still a hockey player. And that was forever waiting for him on the other side of the truth. Looking back now, Prokop does not describe July 19 as the day everything changed: he describes it as the day he finally stopped dividing himself into pieces. For the first time in years, the version of his true self and the version on the ice were no longer separated by silence: they had become the same person. And for the first time, he was a child stepping onto the outdoor rinks in Edmonton; he could chase the NHL, carrying only one version of himself. The days following July 19, 2021, unfolded faster than Prokop could process. His phone buzzed relentlessly with calls, text messages and interview requests as news organizations across North America rushed to tell the story of the 19-year-old who was rewriting century-old history in a prestigious organization like the NHL. For a brief moment, it felt as though the hockey world had paused to acknowledge a milestone much larger than the game itself. Eventually, though, it was time to go back to work. “I’ve had some of the best hockey years of my life and career since I’ve come out,” he stated. For years, stepping onto the ice had meant more than a stick and a pair of skates. Every practice, every game and every locker room conversation existed alongside an unspoken edge of himself he felt he had to protect. The emotional energy required to maintain that separation had quietly become part of his daily routine, even if no one around him realized it. Once that weight disappeared, so did the fear that accompanied it. “My trainer definitely noticed it right away,” Prokop said. “He was like, ‘You just look so much more confident in yourself.’” The change was not something Prokop had consciously noticed in himself. It was reflected to him by the people who saw him day in and day out. His confidence showed up in places beyond conversations or interviews. It carried into his training sessions, where he was surpassing personal records almost immediately after coming out, something he credits less to physical changes than to the mental freedom he had finally found. The real test came only a few months later: walking into an entirely new locker room. As he prepared for the following season, Prokop was not returning to teammates he already knew. He was joining a new group of players, many of whom learned his story through headlines rather than introductions. After spending years wondering how hockey would respond, he suddenly found himself facing the very situation, coupled with the rest: earning the trust of people who knew his story before they knew him. “I think coming out is one thing,” Prokop said. “But then switching teams, going into a different locker room with a bunch of players you don't know-that can definitely be nerve-racking.” The uncertainty, however, never materialized. That acceptance he received changed far more than his comfort inside the locker room. It changed the way he approached the game itself. “My life was a lot easier in hockey,” he reflected. “Being able to go out there and not care about what other people think… no rumors are going on about me, just being able to go out there and play really good hockey, that’s all I had to focus on.” The simplicity became the greatest freedom of all. For the first time in years, hockey was only hockey again: the sport he devoted his life to, made sacrifices for and intertwined itself into who he is at his core. The statistics reflected it. More importantly, so did the experience. “If you look at it from a statistical point of view, it was my best season I’ve ever had,” Prokop said. “And easily the most enjoyable season I’ve ever had as well.” Coming out had not changed the player Luke Prokop could become. It finally allowed him to become that player. In truth, coming out was never meant to be the defining accomplishment of his career. It was simply a moment that allowed the rest of it to continue. The goal had never changed. Every off-season workout, every practice, and every game still revolved around the same dream he had carried. Yet as the months passed, Prokop began to realize his story no longer belonged solely to him. Messages arrived from parents, trying to support their children. Young hockey players reached out with questions. They had never felt comfortable asking anyone else. The family shared stories about conversations. They had finally been able to have after reading his statement. As years passed, the significance of the date slowly became less central to his own life. Not because it mattered any less, but because it had become part of who he was. “I think sometimes I forget about my story and how much it actually helps and affects people,” he admitted. Then, about a month ago, his father received a phone call. The caller was someone neither of them knew. A 70-year-old man had somehow found the work number and left a voicemail. For 67 years, he had hidden who he was from nearly everyone around him. His family. His friends. The people who had known him for decades had never known him completely. Then he had seen Luke Prokop’s story. “He said the main reason he came out was that he saw my story,” Prokop said. His father listened to the voicemail. Then called Luke. As he retold the story, his voice began to break. For a moment, hockey disappeared. None of it mattered as much as one stranger. Finally decided he no longer wanted to spend the rest of his life pretending to be somebody he was not. The voicemail was not the only reminder. One afternoon, curious, Prokop scrolled back through messages he had received in the days immediately following his announcement. Buried beneath thousands of notifications were conversations he had not looked at in years. One person thought about him before coming out to their parents the following day. Another returned later with an update. “I came out yesterday because I saw what you did,” they wrote. “It went great.” Reading them years later carried a different weight than they did in the moment. Back then, everything happened too quickly to process fully. Now, with distance, he could finally understand what those messages had really meant. Confirmation that the uncertainty, the fear and every difficult conversation leading up to that day, how to reach people he would likely never meet, but somehow had the biggest impact on their lives. For someone who had spent years wondering whether telling the truth would cost him in the game he loved, the realization was almost difficult to comprehend. His story had not taken anything away from hockey. It had quietly become part of someone else's life. And somewhere, in a voicemail left on a work phone, that reality became impossible ever to forget. For someone who spent years protecting his privacy, agreeing to spend three years in front of a camera felt almost contradictory. Long before audiences would see ‘The Hockey Player’, Prokop had quietly wrestled with whether he wanted the documentary to exist at all. For years, privacy had been a form of protection. Before July 19, it was how he navigated a world where only pieces of his life felt safe to share. Even after coming out publicly, that instinct never completely disappeared. He still viewed himself as a fairly private person, someone whose life away from the rink belonged to the people closest to him rather than the public who had come to know his name. Saying yes to a documentary meant opening a door he had spent years trying to keep closed. This commitment was not for the weekend, not for a single interview; it was for three years. Cameras followed him through practices, road trips, training sessions, and the quieter moments in between, documenting a chapter of his life that extends far beyond the Instagram post that introduced him to much of the world. Rather than revisiting a single moment in history, 'The Hockey Player' follows everything that came after – the uncertainty of chasing an NHL career, the pressure of becoming an unexpected cultural figure and the everyday reality of balancing both. “It took a lot for me to say yes to this documentary,” Prokop admitted. Yet every hesitation eventually led him back to the same place. The same reason he decided to press “Post” years earlier. Helping those who have not yet found their voice. When he had come out publicly, it was for him. At first, that was enough. He wanted the freedom to play the game. He loved without carrying the weight of secrecy. Everything that followed, the headlines, the interviews and the attention, was never something he set out to chase. But over time, he realized his story was not something he could simply leave behind. Some organizations leaned into it more than others. In Milwaukee, the Admirals created a prime night around his visit, invited him to lead the city's Pride Parade as the Grand Marshal (a high honor for Pride) and embraced the opportunity to celebrate what his journey represented. Other stops allowed him to focus almost entirely on hockey. Both experiences taught him something valuable: There was not one right way to carry the responsibility that had found him. Instead, he learned how to balance both parts of his life. That balance became increasingly important because, even years later, He continued to see the impact of visibility in places he never expected. “I think it’s important for me to be a little bit more public about it,” Prokop said. “When fans come to a game, they can actually see the representation on the ice. They can feel more accepted.” For years, he searched for someone who understood what he was experiencing. He never found that person. That memory of feeling alone in many moments is why helping others has never felt like an obligation to him. It feels personal. Growing up, friends and parents jokingly named him “The BFG” – the Big Friendly Giant. Long before hockey became his profession, kindness had become part of who he was. Looking back now, he sees a direct line between that child and the person he hopes to be remembered as. The documentary became another extension of that philosophy. Not because he wanted to revisit the day that changed his life. Because he wanted someone else to see their own life in it. “If I could help just one kid, one adult – no matter who it is, their age, their gender, whatever profession they’re doing –if they see my story and gather some confidence from it, that’s a win for me.” Throughout his career, Prokop has celebrated championships, personal milestones and victories that come with chasing a professional dream. Yet when he reflects on what he hopes remains long after his skates are hung up, his perspective reaches far beyond the rink—an everlasting legacy. Rather than being remembered solely for goals, statistics or championships, Prokop hopes his career's lasting impact is measured differently. “I love winning championships and accolades,” he said. “But I believe what your legacy is going to be outweighs championships and accolades. I’d rather be known as someone who helped a lot of people.” In many ways, ‘The Hockey Player’ (now available to rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV) exists because of that belief. Not to relive history, but to leave behind something far more lasting – a reason for someone else to believe their story is worth telling, too. Nearly 5 years after sharing a few hundred words that changed the course of his life, Prokop found himself sitting in the dark in theaters, watching those years unfold all over again. Only this time, he was not experiencing them alone. ‘The Hockey Player’ made its world premiere at the historic Frameline International LGBTQ+ Film Festival in San Francisco before returning home to Edmonton, where friends, family, and the community that watched him fall in love with hockey gathered to see his story from the beginning to the end. Days later, the documentary concluded its premiere run in Toronto, bringing the journey back to one of hockey's most recognizable cities. Each screening represented something different. San Francisco celebrated the film's introduction to the world. Edmonton brought it home. Toronto reminded audiences that while Prokop’s story has resonated far beyond hockey, it has always remained rooted within it. For Prokop, however, the Premieres were never about watching a documentary. They were about revisiting the moments that shaped him. "San Francisco, I knew nobody there. That was the one I was really nervous for... I didn't know what their reaction was going to be, but it was extremely positive," He said. "Edmonton was super cool because all of my family and friends, people who have been on this journey with me for so long, were able to experience it in full detail... For them to be there, share it with them, see it on the screen, it was just awesome to have my loved ones and everyone that I care about there." By the time the credits rolled for the final time before the film was released to the rest of the world, ‘The Hockey Player' had become more than a documentary, chronicling one announcement. It would be kind of a record of everything that came before, everything that followed, and the people who helped carry him through both, as he carries on the next generation of the brave, courageous to share their story alongside his. Some journeys only make sense when viewed from the other side. At the time, they feel uncertain. Heavy. Unfinished. Each step seems disconnected from the last, making it nearly impossible to believe they are guiding anywhere at all. Only with distance do they begin to reveal their shape. The little boy racing home after school to spend every possible minute on an outdoor rink could never have imagined the silence he would one day carry. The teenager who questioned whether honesty might cost him the only dream he had ever known could not yet see the family waiting to embrace him, the teammates who would welcome him without hesitation or the strangers whose lives would quietly intersect with his own. None of those moments erased what came before them. They gave it meaning. The fear. The loneliness. Each became another step toward something he simply could not yet see. Today, Luke Prokop continues to chase the same dream that first carried him onto the ice as a child. His days are still marked by training before sunrise, competing for opportunities and measuring success by strides in growth and sacrifice, in the hope of one day getting the call to be called up to the National Hockey League. The difference is that the journey no longer belongs only to him. Somewhere, another young athlete is wondering if they have to choose between authenticity and ambition. Somewhere, a parent is searching for the right words. Somewhere, someone is standing in the same uncertainty Luke once believed would never end. If his story has proven anything, it is that life is rarely transformed in a single moment. More often than not, it changes the conversation from conversation to choice to choice, until one day you look back and realize the moments that once felt disconnected were quietly becoming something whole. For years, Luke Prokop believed he had to protect the person to preserve the player. He never imagined that embracing both would ultimately reveal his purpose. Looking back now, it becomes impossible to separate where one ended and another began. The player gave him the dream. The person gave him the courage to keep chasing it. The purpose gave that dream meaning. Perhaps that was belonging all along. Because in the end, Luke Prokop may never be remembered solely for the player he became, the person he fought to be or the purpose he chose to pursue. It will be remembered because he proved they were never three separate stories. There was always only one. Luke's documentary 'The Hockey Player' is now available to rent worldwide on Amazon Prime and Apple TV as of publication date June 29, 2026. Disclaimer: The thoughts, experiences, and opinions shared in this article are solely those of Luke Prokop and are based on his personal journey. They do not necessarily reflect the views of any organizations, sponsors, or institutions with which Luke may be associated. To ensure accuracy and maintain context, Luke Prokop reviewed this article before publication. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this material is strictly prohibited. For any inquiries or concerns regarding this article, please contact info@hazzemedia.com

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Interview by Holly Arend | August 17 2026 Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz Before she was capturing player walk-ins, planning social media campaigns and racing from the tunnel to the press box on game nights, Lauren Rodolitz was a kid riding the train from Long Island to Penn Station with her family. New York Rangers games were a ritual. Her family would pull on their jerseys, join the rush of fans headed into the city and make a night of it at Madison Square Garden. “A night at MSG was more than just hockey,” Rodolitz said. “It was a staple, a routine and a bonding experience for my family.” The details of those nights still stay with her: the familiar faces around their seats, the family predictions about whether there would be a fight and the roar of the crowd on the walk back toward Penn Station after a win. Somewhere in those moments, hockey became more than a game Rodolitz was born into a Rangers family. Her grandfather was one of the team’s longtime season-ticket holders before the tickets were passed down to her dad. Hockey was always part of the household, whether it was a trip into the city or dinner in front of the television on game night. As she got older, though, she began paying attention to more than the action on the ice. Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz She remembered the people around her family’s seats, the predictions about whether there would be a fight and the feeling of walking toward Penn Station after a big win. The stories that stayed with her were not always the goals or the final score. They were the pieces of the game that made people care about it in the first place. “Sports hold some of the most powerful stories,” Rodolitz said. “I began to love understanding why sports mattered to the people watching just as much as I loved what was happening on the ice.” That interest in people and storytelling followed her beyond the rink. Rodolitz grew up as an all-star cheerleader before competing at the high school level and cheering on the sidelines for football and basketball. The experience taught her how much a crowd can shape a moment and how creativity can change the way an audience responds. Cheerleading also gave her a sense of confidence that later became important in a field where she often had to walk into a room, introduce an idea and ask athletes to trust her with it. “It was one of my first experiences understanding the power of making a moment,” she said. “I learned that the way you present something can completely change how people experience it.” By high school, she knew she wanted to do something creative, even if she was not yet sure what that would look like. She took business classes and, during her senior year, joined Virtual Enterprise, a two-period course where students created and operated their own company. Her class built a sleep pod company called NAPR. Rodolitz served as chief marketing officer, helping run the company’s website and social media accounts while creating videos, graphics, advertisements and trade show displays. It was the first time she saw how closely creativity and strategy could work together. “I wasn’t just creating content for the sake of making something look good,” Rodolitz said. “I was creating with a purpose.” She arrived at the University of Michigan as a communications major, still figuring out where that purpose might take her. Michigan had always been her dream school. Her dad attended the university, and the friendships and traditions that came from his time in Ann Arbor became part of Rodolitz’s childhood, too. She had grown up singing the fight song, visiting campus and treating red as an off-limits color during the week of the Michigan-Ohio State game. When she received her acceptance letter, she said her entire family cried. But she still had not connected her love of creativity with her love of sports. That changed during the summer after Michigan Hockey announced that several of its biggest names, including Luke Hughes, Owen Power and Kent Johnson, would return for another season. Rodolitz sent the post to her dad, excited that they would get to watch the players at Michigan before they went to the National Hockey League (NHL). Her dad joked back with a question that changed everything. “Wouldn’t it be funny if you were the one posting that?” Rodolitz had not considered that a person could build a career running a sports team’s social media. At the time, she said, the people behind team accounts were not as visible as they are now. The content was there, but the creators behind it were not always part of the conversation. After her dad’s comment, she spent hours researching careers in sports and looking for a way into Michigan Hockey. She found the email address for Kristy McNeil, the team’s sports information director, and sent a message asking whether there might be an internship, shadowing opportunity or even a chance to talk. A month and a half later, McNeil replied. Michigan Hockey had a TikTok username but no posts, no followers and no one specifically running the account. McNeil had one question for Rodolitz. “Do you know anything about TikTok?” Rodolitz had spent much of the pandemic on the app. The answer was easy. Her first video for Michigan Hockey was an edit featuring then-captain Nick Blankenburg welcoming fans to the account. Looking back, Rodolitz calls it “cringey,” but it was also the beginning of the work that would shape her career. On her first day around the team, she arrived at media day without knowing many of the players or having a formal introduction. She was there to capture behind-the-scenes content, but at first, some players assumed she was simply helping with the event. “I came into their media day and I didn’t know anyone,” she said. “I didn’t even get an introduction. I just showed up.” Still, the experience made something clear. Standing behind the camera, she could see the humor, personalities and relationships that existed away from the ice. She knew fans would want to see that side, too. Her job became more than posting highlights. She wanted to be a bridge between the team she got to know and the people following from home. The process was not immediate. Michigan’s players had not been asked to participate in the kind of social content Rodolitz had in mind, and an early attempt at a question video fell flat. She tried asking players something during game-night arrivals and got only a few answers. Everyone looked confused. “We were like, ‘Ok, how do we have fun?’” Rodolitz said. “How do we get the guys to see that we want to do fun things, that we’re doing this for them?” The answer came through a plane video. Rodolitz posted footage of players boarding a flight, and fans began filling the comments with jokes that forward Philippe Lapointe resembled actor Timothée Chalamet. She brought the comments to the Michigan Hockey media group chat and suggested a question: Which actor would play each player in a movie? The goal was partly to get Lapointe to say Chalamet. But when the players answered, debated and laughed through the question, Rodolitz saw something bigger. The video took off, and “Monday Questions” was born. Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz Every Monday after practice, players knew Rodolitz would be waiting with a new question as Gabrielle Healy filmed. Fans came to expect a weekly glimpse of the team’s personalities, whether it involved favorite foods, sailboat names or an unexpected debate among teammates. “The guys would come in every day and be like, ‘Lauren, what’s the question?’” Rodolitz said. “I wouldn’t tell them until after practice.” As the content gained traction, the players began to see that Rodolitz was not simply putting a camera in their faces. The videos helped fans connect with them as people, not only as prospects or athletes. That trust changed the work. “They saw I wasn’t just there to stand and film them,” she said. “I was there to help them and showcase who they were on and, most importantly, off the ice in a real way.” Michigan Hockey’s social presence grew quickly. The team became the most-followed college hockey program across platforms, while individual players saw their own followings rise. Fans brought Beniers his favorite candy after seeing him mention it in a video. They made friendship bracelets, recreated smoothie content and lined up at events with a familiarity that went beyond the box score. For Rodolitz, the response showed that the content was creating its own kind of community. “We weren’t just following trends,” she said. “We were helping set them and shape what college sports content could be.” Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz The role continued to expand. Rodolitz helped with game-night coverage, media availability, NIL, player interviews, recruiting visits and the behind-the-scenes work that went into an elite college hockey program. She traveled to the Frozen Four, watched Adam Fantilli win the Hobey Baker Award and found herself part of a close group that became more like a family than a workplace. Then, during her senior year, McNeil posted on social media celebrating Michigan Hockey’s growth and noting that her intern was graduating. The Columbus Blue Jackets saw it. The organization encouraged Rodolitz to apply for an opening in social media. At first, she treated the application as interview practice. She was from New York. Most of her friends were planning to move back there after graduation. Moving alone to Ohio did not feel like a likely next step. But the interviews kept coming. Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz The call arrived while Rodolitz was in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with Michigan Hockey during the NCAA regional tournament. An unfamiliar number called twice, and she ignored it both times, assuming it was spam. Then she received a text from a Blue Jackets representative asking her to call back. “I remember freaking out,” Rodolitz said. “I was like, ‘Wait, did I just get a job, or is she telling me I didn’t get a job?’” She called back and received the offer. After calling her parents, she asked McNeil to come to her hotel room so she could share the news in person. Later, Michigan hockey coach Brandon Naurato announced it to the team. The players cheered, clapped and urged her to give a speech. The moment confirmed what Rodolitz had felt throughout her time in Ann Arbor. The content worked because the relationships behind it were real. “I had started this internship with Michigan Hockey wanting to create content that made people feel connected to the team,” she said. “Somewhere along the way, I found lifelong friendships, a million memories and a community that became so much more than a workplace.” Taking the job still meant leaving nearly everything familiar behind. Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz Rodolitz moved to Columbus after graduation, away from her parents, her twin sister and the group of friends she had known since childhood. She had visited Ohio only briefly with Michigan Hockey. Now, she was starting her professional career in a new city, working for an NHL team and trying to build a life of her own. “I’ve never been so terrified and anxious in my life, to be honest,” she said. The adjustment was eased by people around the organization, including former Michigan players Kent Johnson and Blankenburg. But Rodolitz still had to learn the pace and scale of the NHL, where social media exists alongside marketing, corporate partnerships, community initiatives, sponsor obligations and the demands of an 82-game season. Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz She also became the first social media staff member to travel full time with the Blue Jackets, taking on a role that did not come with a set blueprint. Her first major event came only weeks after she started, when Columbus held the third overall pick in the 2023 NHL draft. Rodolitz was sent to Nashville to help capture the moment. She waited in the tunnel as the first two picks were made. When the Blue Jackets selected Fantilli, a player she had worked with at Michigan, the uncertainty of her first weeks in the NHL began to fade. The next day, Columbus selected another former Wolverine, Gavin Brindley. “It was my ‘I’ve got this’ reminder,” Rodolitz said. “I knew what I was doing. I was hired and I was there for a reason.” Today, Rodolitz’s role with the Blue Jackets includes everything from player walk-ins and warmups to live game coverage, social posts, theme-night content and community events. On a home game night, she can start in the office during morning skate and work until after 11 p.m. Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz Her focus, however, remains close to the idea that first motivated her at Michigan: show fans the people behind the jerseys. In Columbus, that has meant adapting the social concepts she helped build at Michigan for a professional team, where player schedules, individual comfort levels and organizational priorities all shape what can happen on camera. With time, familiarity and trust, Rodolitz said players, staff and management have bought into finding new ways to grow the content while keeping it authentic to the people it features. A player might be known as quiet, but Rodolitz can frame a question that lets teammates reveal he is the group’s biggest prankster. A road trip can become a way to show a player returning to his home country. A bobblehead promotion can become a chance to highlight someone’s sense of humor. The goal is not simply to fill a feed. It is to make a fan feel like they know the team a little better. Photos provided by Lauren Rodolitz Her personal TikTok has become another part of that work. At first, she and Michigan Hockey co-intern Maggie Pilibosian filmed each other for fun, creating a digital record of the games, travel and friendship they were experiencing. As her following grew, the account became a community that connected her with Michigan and Blue Jackets fans, fellow sports creators and aspiring professionals trying to picture a place for themselves in the industry. It also helped her realize the account could show people a path into sports that she had not known existed when she was younger. “If I had someone like me when I was in high school that I had followed on Instagram or TikTok, I think I would have started my career in sports so much earlier,” she said. Now, she receives messages from students, aspiring creators and young women interested in sports. She has spoken with students, taken calls about career paths and met people at games who recognize her from the content she once made simply because she enjoyed it. Rodolitz did not find hockey through a perfectly mapped-out plan. Her story began with family train rides to Madison Square Garden, grew through a spontaneous message to Michigan Hockey and continued with a leap into a city she did not yet know. The work has changed since those early Rangers games, but the reason behind it has stayed the same. Hockey was always about the people around it. Rodolitz just found a way to help more people see them.

Gallery by Lauren Henwood | August 11 2026 Real Salt Lake vs FC Juárez (League Cup) by Lauren Henwood Real Salt Lake continued its strong run in the League Cup on Aug. 11, earning a 3-0 victory over FC Juárez behind three unanswered goals. Morgan Guilavogui opened the scoring before Sergi Solans doubled the lead, and MLS rookie Lineker Rodrigues capped the night with his first career MLS goal in the 68th minute. Real Salt Lake vs FC Juárez (League Cup) by Lauren Henwood The victory gave RSL back-to-back shutouts and extended its active scoreless streak to 264 consecutive minutes. The victory keeps RSL rolling as it returns to MLS regular-season play Saturday against Minnesota United FC.

Interview by Christina Winnegar | August 11 2026 Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker When the box fell open, it revealed the face of a stranger. At first glance, there was no salient reason the photograph should have carried any meaning. No familiar face filled the frame, no family memory appeared to live inside of it. Until it was turned over, a handwritten note caressed the back of the image, left by the person in the photograph, thanking her dear friend who had stood behind the camera. The face in the photograph belonged to a stranger. But the eye belonged to someone Akeem Baker knew by heart. His mother. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker By the time the photograph surfaced among her belongings, she had been gone for nearly a year. Baker was at his grandmother’s house in Denver, Colorado, moving through what remained of a life he had known first as a son, when he first picked up the image. The note was brief, but its existence made the photograph feel larger than the paper holding it. Until that moment, Baker had known his mother in the role that mattered most to him: She was his mom. The photograph revealed another part of her life, the creative behind the camera, an artist whose work had reached beyond their family and become deeply meaningful to someone he had never met. For an 18-year-old still learning how to live among her absence, the photograph did not make the loss easier. It did not answer why she was gone or return any of the moments her passing had taken with her. But it gave the grave loss another perspective. It showed Baker that his mother had left pieces of herself in places he had never known to look. “I think in that moment when I picked up that photo, it just gave me some type of clarity,” he said. “My mom had an impact on people through photography, and I just think she gave me that gift, to pass on that trait of making people feel…giving people a voice through photos.” The clarity did not begin with the box. Long before he had held that photograph in his hands, another image of his mother had already changed the direction of his life. It came to him in a dream, like most things. Baker remembers seeing the scene from above. His mother was in his arms at the ocean. In the dream, she passed there. The next day, he faced a cold reality. She was sick. She had developed cholangiocarcinoma (Bile Duct cancer), a rare disease that was attacking her liver. He was told she might have two months to live. She fought for seven. During those months, a trip was planned to California for his 18th birthday. He wanted to believe they would make it there together, even as part of him understood the possibility they would not. His mother passed shortly before the trip and 30 days before he turned 18. Baker went alone. The trip they had planned together became one he had to experience without her. It was there, inside a journey reshaped by grief, that a camera first found its way into his hands. At the time, there was no career waiting behind the lens. No promise that being a creative would become his profession, connecting him to professional athletes or placing him on commercial sets. There was only a camera, the life in front of it, and the space where his mother was supposed to be. If the trip first placed the camera in Baker’s hands, the words on the back of the stranger's photograph helped him understand why it might matter. It connected what was now in his hands to what had once been in hers. Still, the moment did not announce itself as the beginning of a career. Baker went on about his day, as he remembers it, and did not think too much more about the significance of the photograph. Later that day, a friend invited him to come along for a YouTube video shoot. He held the camera during the shoot, and his first thought was not that he should be the one behind the camera, but that he should begin making YouTube videos of his own. So he decided to go all in, walk into the store, and buy a camera. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker He was too excited to wait until he got home to take it out of the packaging. Baker took it out inside the store and walked out into the cold Denver air, while snow was falling, painting the scene for what would become the very moment he fell like a moth to a flame, to the very talent that would once shape his being. A friend became his first subject, standing beside a police car as Baker raised the new camera. More pictures followed outside his grandmother’s house. With every frame, the object in his hands began to feel less like something he had purchased and more like something he had been missing. By his third day, someone had paid him for his work. The money mattered because it proved the instinct could become something tangible. But what held Baker was not the payment. It was the feeling that the camera had opened; a form of expression large enough to hold the creativity he had fostered long before he knew what to title it. Although Nashville, Tennessee, was home first, Denver became the city where that expressive life began to take shape. He spent much of his childhood being directed toward the world of sports. Height created an expectation, and natural ability allowed him to meet it. Neither made the game feel like his calling. Creativity reached his mind more directly. He drew, painted and looked for ways to give form to what existed inside his mind. The camera became another tool, but it was the first one that seemed capable of capturing it all. No professional athletes were waiting for him in the beginning. There was his former high school, where he photographed football players training. There were the streets of Denver, buildings, fragments of architecture, passing strangers and people experiencing homelessness whom much of the city had learned to walk around without taking a second to see. The camera made him slow down. It asked him to notice what was in front of him and decide what deserved to remain present after the moment had passed. The subjects changed from one walk to the next, but the impulse remained: Stay with what another might overlook and create an image capable of asking someone else to stay, too. For roughly a year, Baker photographed nearly anything that gave him a reason to keep the camera in his hands. Some opportunities paid. Many did not. He was not yet moving through Denver with a clear understanding of where the work would lead, he was creating enough of it that, if a door appeared, he would have something ready to carry through. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker The first major door did not look like an assignment. It looked like an airport favor for a friend. A friend working security called because Darryl Dwayne Granberry Jr. (DDG) had arrived in Denver with members of his team. No one was available to pick them up, and Baker was asked if he could help. There was no credential attached to the request, no promised payment and no indication the camera he brought would leave its bag. He and another friend collected the group, stopped at Walmart and spent time forming a connection. Somewhere between the airport and the ordinary movement of the day, DDG noticed what Baker was carrying around. He asked if he wanted to photograph the show. The answer was immediate. That night, the venue gave him everything a young photographer could not control, yet he followed the performance through until the show itself broke apart. A fight erupted. A man was punched and fell from the stage. Security moved through the crowd, the people involved were removed, and the night ended before he could place the finished photographs in DDG’s hands. The opportunity appeared to have closed almost as quickly as it opened. Baker and his five friends had pooled their money for one hotel room at the venue. There were more people than beds, more ambition than financial certainty and no guarantee the images would ever reach the person they had been made for. He edited them anyway. The disrupted show did not change what remained on the memory card. If another opening came, the work needed to be ready. That opening arrived inside of an elevator. He was traveling down as DDG was heading up. When the doors separated, the rapper and the finished photographs briefly occupied the same place, at the same time. Baker showed him the images. DDG loved them. He posted them on social media, and the photographs soon went viral. At 19-years-old, approximately one year after purchasing his first camera, Baker watched his work travel farther than his name ever had. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker To anyone encountering the photographs online, the breakthrough could have appeared immediate: A young photographer met a famous rapper, captured the right images and received the right post. The finished frames could not show the year of free work behind them. The attention brought more gigs, but it did not create a finished career. Baker still needed rooms in which to sharpen what the one viral post had allowed people to notice. Around that period, and throughout the stretch that followed, concert photography became one of his most important training grounds. The venues were dark, crowded, unpredictable, and every performance required him to anticipate a moment before it existed, hoping to preserve it before it passed. Many of the shows were photographed for free. But for Baker, access was the payment before money was. A credential placed him inside a room. The room gave him a recognizable subject. The finished photographs gave his city another reason to imagine what he could create for them. Lizzy Brodie, a Denver show promoter, helped him enter many of those spaces. She secured media passes, connected him to performances and supported his dream before it carried enough visible proof to support itself. Her access did not guarantee the quality of the work. It allowed him to prove why he deserved to return. “I did a lot of free shows,” Baker said. “People would say, ‘Hey, he worked with this person. How do I get with him now?” The unpaid work slowly but surely created paid opportunities. A photograph of someone recognizable could reach a local artist or business before he had ever introduced himself. Each image became evidence that he could enter a room, understand what mattered inside it and leave with someone people wanted to keep. He learned free work could either exploit a creative or position one. The difference was whether the opportunity created something capable of opening the next door. DDG had shown him how suddenly that door could appear. Concert photography taught him to remain ready when it did. Readiness still had to exist around UPS. Long after DDG posted the photographs, 2 a.m continued to arrive. So did the boxes, the dependable check and the hours before sunrise when the rest of Denver seemed to be living a life that had paused for him. By 9 a.m, the shift was over. Sleep followed until roughly 3 p.m, when another day began inside the one already half-spent. There were photographs to take, edits to finish, and messages to be sent before Baker returned to work and prepared to do it all over again. The camera was introducing Baker to the life he wanted while the overnight shift reminded him that wanting it did not yet make it his. One offered consistency but demanded that his life conform to its hours. The other offered no guarantee at all, yet felt more like his own life each time he entered it. For a while, he attempted to hold both. Then someone from his past placed a different number in front of him. An assignment that paid a couple thousand dollars to photograph a company golf outing. It was more than a good check. It disrupted the argument Baker had been making with himself every morning at UPS. Until then, photography had produced possibility in pieces: a paid shoot on his third day, a credential to a concert, images shared online and another famous name added to his portfolio. None of which had been large enough to silence the practical question waiting beneath the passion. Could the camera sustain a life? For the first time, the answer did not feel out of reach. One person had placed several thousand dollars behind his belief in Baker’s eye. If one person could recognize his value, perhaps another could, too. He quit the job at UPS. The decision frightened his grandmother. To her, the overnight shift was not a dream, but it was stable. It came with predictable money and the kind of security families learn to value after living without enough, and being a creative offered none of those promises. He understood the concern. He had spent countless hours working beside people who told him they had spent over 20 years in the same job. They spoke about places they had never visited and time that had moved without asking whether they were prepared to lose it. Their choices were not failures; they were choices based on what survival required. But listening to them made Baker afraid of a different kind of loss, not losing the job, but losing the years. “I’m heaving on high risk, high reward,” he shared. The risk became real almost immediately. The homeowners association at his grandmother’s community learned Baker was living with her. The neighborhood carried an age restriction he did not meet, and the family was given a choice: Either his grandmother would have to leave, or he would. He left. The freedom he had chosen did not look like freedom then. There was no permanent home waiting beyond the UPS doors, no apartment secured by the golf check and no quiet period in which to build a business without wondering where his body would rest at the end of the day. Some nights ended on couches. Others ended inside his car. Online, the portfolio continued to grow. The images were polished, opportunities appeared promising, and the name behind them seemed to be moving closer to the life he imagined. Outside the frame, that same person could not always say where he would sleep. At points, only a few hundred dollars remained. Food security became uncertain. The camera was valuable enough to open doors but not yet enough to guarantee there would be a door to sleep behind. Clients still expected their work. Deadlines did not soften because the person responsible for meeting them was struggling. An image could be delivered without revealing the car outside, the temporary couch or the calculation of whether there was enough money to eat. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker Photography had taught Baker how much a frame could reveal. Homelessness taught him how much it could hide. There was no dignity in the struggle itself. Sleeping in a car did not make Baker more talented, and hunger did not make the finished work more meaningful. Hardship remained hardship, even after it became part of a story that others could later call inspiring. What mattered was that the instability did not convince him to stop. “You kind of have to be obsessed with it,” Baker said. “To the point where this is all I’m going to do and there’s no other way. I don’t care if I’m homeless, if I ain’t got no money, whatever that looks like. I’m going all in to make this the main thing.” Going all in did not mean he never questioned the decision. During the moments when the dream appeared least practical, Baker brought those questions to God. “Even when I was feeling discouraged, I just turned to God,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Am I making the right moves here? Is this the right thing for me to do? Do I keep going?’” His grandmother thought he was crazy. Other people could not understand why he had quit a stable job, packed his life or continued pursuing a future they could not see. But at the heart of his heart, he believes some things in life are for you to understand and not for other people to understand. He did not have the privilege of knowing how the story would end. He had faith that the next step would reveal itself once he reached it. The next one looked like a baby shower. Baker’s barber was expecting a child and needed photographs from the shower. There wasn't much money attached to the request, but there was an offer: document the day in exchange for free haircuts for a year. In the economy of survival, value did not always arrive as cash. So, he accepted. He came to the shower from the same car he had been sleeping in, prepared to make the photographs, complete the trade and move toward whatever came next. Then a watch caught his attention. It was expensive, far beyond anything Baker could imagine purchasing at that point in his life. The young man wearing it did not seem much older than him, which made the object feel less like decoration and more like evidence. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker The man was JL Skinner, a safety for the Denver Broncos. Baker pulled up his Instagram and showed him the work. Skinner looked through the photographs and said they should create something together. It was the kind of promise people make easily at events: generous enough to feel sincere in the moment but vague enough never to become real afterward. Skinner walked away, looked through more of the portfolio and returned. He repeated it. They were going to work together. Two days later, with Skinner’s birthday approaching, a message appeared. This time, the promise came with a date. The shoot created time for conversation beyond the brief introduction at the shower. Somewhere between the images and the discussion of the work, the life behind Baker’s portfolio and drive entered the room. The car, the temporary places, the reality that whatever arrangement was keeping him indoors at that moment could end without warning. Skinner listened; he mentioned an extra room. Baker could stay there. The offer was almost too large for the amount of time they had known each other. Days earlier, Skinner had been a stranger wearing an expensive watch at a baby shower. Now, he was opening his home to someone who had arrived carrying a camera and no dependable place to return to. Baker packed what he had. A room and a closet represented more than shelter. They offered the ability to close the door at night and know he would still be allowed to open it the following morning. The stability gave his belongings somewhere to remain, his body somewhere to rest and his creativity the time it needed to continue fostering. It gave the dream somewhere to sleep. For the first several days, Baker noticed Skinner leaving the house without understanding where he was going. Eventually, he asked. “Training camp, fool,” Skinner told him. Players’ families and guests were allowed to attend. Baker began going, too. The field placed him near a world he had been trying to enter without college credentials, institutional backing or a traditional route into professional sports. Suddenly, the people who had existed at a distance were standing within reach. Player saw the content he had been producing with Skinner. Families noticed the camera. Conversations began. Pat Surtain II approached him there. But proximity did not immediately become a partnership. Surtain knew who Baker was. That did not mean he was ready to hire him. For the next two years, Baker sent messages. Some received an answer, while others sat untouched. There were stretches when the thread looked less like conversation than a record of one person refusing to stop believing another opportunity would come. “People don’t know, I was hounding him for two years to get him as a client,” he said. “It didn’t just happen.” The messages continued through months when it appeared Baker was speaking only to himself. “I literally was talking to myself for months on end,” he said. I’m the type of person where I don’t take no for an answer. I’m going to wait. I don’t care how long it takes, but it’s going to happen for me.” Persistence did not mean he was entitled to Surtain’s time. It meant he refused to interpret “not yet” as “never.” Eventually, the answer changed. Surtain became a client. By then, the finished product he provided could make the relationship appear inevitable. Baker had lived with one Broncos player and was creating with another. His work had entered the National Football League (NFL) without the college media program he once believed he needed. The traditional route had closed before he could begin walking through it. He had applied to nearly every major college media program he could find and was met with a rejection from each one. There would be no campus credential, no internship, no established program placing him beside a professional team, and no institutional name assuring people he deserved to be there. His life assembled another route. “I ended up skipping from college to the NFL,” Baker said. “I poured into my craft, and I poured into myself, and I just left God take the rest.” Almost none of it happened in the order a résumé would know how to explain. The NFL was not the end of his development. It was another room, and photography had already taught him that entering one only mattered if he remained willing to grow inside it. For years, a single frame had been enough. It allowed him to isolate the instant that mattered and ask a viewer to look longer than they otherwise might. As the work grew, however, so did a feeling that something remained outside the image. Approximately a year and a half ago, he began to make the shift toward video. Part of the decision was practical. Photography allowed him to charge for the images made during a shoot. Video expanded what he could offer: the original concept, filming, editing, pacing and the ability to shape an entire story from beginning to end. Yet the business opportunity could not fully explain why the medium began to hold him. “I was telling stories through photography, but I felt like I was missing something,” Baker said. “I felt like video was kind of that way to expand the creativity that I was having in my brain.” A photograph could hold one fraction of a second. Video, however, offered the moments beyond it, the anticipation before an athlete moved and the time required for an emotion to become recognizable to an audience. It gave him the ability to do more than show someone what happened. He could guide them toward how it felt to be captured. The expansion continued after his work began reaching larger audiences. He studied established filmmakers, but he also watched creators with a small following. Recognition did not determine whether someone had made a choice worth learning from. “I’m just a sponge to everything,” he expressed. “You have to be that in any craft you’re in, regardless of what tier or what your ranking is or how people view you.” Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker One of his favorite recent concepts for Surtain began without a brief, a field or a specific assignment. He was bored in his room when pieces of an idea began to come together. He kept building until the experiment resembled something he wanted another person to feel. Other projects arrived through relationships in the willingness of another creative to say his name when the opportunity appeared. When a friend was offered a Hydro Flask project but could not accept, he passed it to Baker. The film centered on a professional ice skater, allowing him to tell the person’s story rather than treating the product as the only subject. The company liked the result enough that the work led elsewhere. The next opportunity brought him to Arizona to create a Wendy's commercial with a professional basketball player who had joined the Phoenix Suns. This time, he did not simply operate the camera. He was given full creative control, wrote the script, developed the concept and helped carry the film from its earliest idea through production. A friend's scheduling conflict became a Hydro-Flask film. The Hydro Flask film became proof that he could be trusted with Wendy's. Each project entered the next room before Baker did, speaking for him before he had the opportunity to speak for himself. That pattern repeated tenfold during Super Bowl LX weekend in San Francisco, California. Baker and a friend traveled there without a list of confirmed jobs. Their Guest house stay was little to no comfort, and there was no promise that the trip would produce enough work to justify taking it. The plan was simply to be close enough if something happened. Something did. A production needed a second camera operator with a Sony FX6 for a Post Malone project connected to Bud Light. The call reached Baker's friend, and his knowledge allowed him to step in. After filming, the camera operators handed over their memory cards. A large system was used to adjust the footage, separate the feeds and assemble the material with the speed that stunned him. Within approximately 10 to 15 minutes, he could watch the show organized on an iPad while the remaining color work waited to be completed. The teenager who once photographed a friend beside a police car in the Denver snow was now standing on a Post Malone production during Super Bowl weekend. The distance between those scenes appeared enormous. In reality, it had been crossed through hundreds of smaller decisions. Ones of bringing a camera on an airport favor, editing photographs after a show ended in a fight with no guarantee of returning them, sacrificing comfort not to remain stagnant, accepting a seemingly unreal offer from a stranger and continuing to pursue a dream even when the person on the other side was not returning the energy. “It’s not about what you know. It’s about who you know,” he expressed. The sentence did not diminish the importance of skill. A relationship could recommend him for a set; only the work could prove that the recommendation was deserved. Football had led him toward basketball, photography toward filmmaking and one relationship toward another, all in the pursuit of connection. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker The names had become larger: Pat Surtain II, Nik Bonitto, JL Skinner, Bo Nix and Post Malone. Alongside, the brands had too: Wendy’s, Hydro Flask and Bud Light. Yet listing them said little about what the work demanded from the person carrying it. Social media gifts, creative work, and the appearance of inevitability. The final film arrives with its color corrected, its pacing deliberate, and the strongest moments placed exactly where they belong. Nothing inside it reveals the hours when a creator cannot find the idea or when opening the project felt more exhausting than finishing it. Baker experienced days when he did not want to touch a camera or look at a computer. Clients still called, and the deadlines remained where they had been placed. The pressure to produce did not disappear because the mind responsible for producing had reached its limit. “People kind of look at us like robots, like we can just go, go, go and don’t need mental stability or a mental break,” he expressed. “I think it can get hard on anybody.” Eventually, the work became overwhelming enough that he stepped away for several weeks. There were no shoots and no edits. He needed a distance from the expectation that loving the work meant being endlessly capable of completing it. The break was not evidence that he cared less. It was evidence that caring required something from him. That distinction mattered because his creativity had always depended upon feeling. Bigger wanted an audience to experience emotion through his work, yet the person behind the camera cannot remain emotionally available without rest to harvest that creativity. “They [people on the outside] don’t see the hardship that you go through,” he said. “They see the glamour of working with all these athletes, travel, and stuff like that.” The glamour cannot show homelessness. It cannot show a bank account reduced to a few hundred dollars, the uncertainty of whether there would be enough to eat or the client who still expected their work while he slept inside a car. Even after Baker moved from that period, it remained part of the way he understood success. He had not risen because the hardship transformed into something beautiful. He wrote because the hardship was not given the authority to decide where his story ended. Faith carried him through parts no portfolio could display. It gave him somewhere to place fear when there was no visible evidence the decision would work. It allowed him to believe another door existed beyond the one that closed, even when he was standing outside with nowhere to sleep. The career he eventually built did not prove every risk should be taken. It proved that his had been rooted in something deeper than the desire to be seen. For Baker, freedom was never the absence of work. It was the ability to choose what the work would serve. He understood that a traditional job could provide stability, but no longer believed that permanence was the same. A manager could decide the following morning that the employee was no longer needed. A dependable position could disappear without the years devoted to it ever being returned. The greater fear was not that pursuing the camera might fail. It was that refusing to pursue it might work. When asked to identify the reason beneath all that risk, Baker did not name a client, a financial goal or the possibility of becoming widely known for his work. He named his 12-year-old brother. Both learned loss early. The man Baker describes as his father, his stepfather, who helped raise him from approximately age 6 until age 15, died by suicide while he was in high school. His younger brother was 6-years-old when he lost his father and 8-years-old when their mother passed. Since their mother passed 30 days before Baker turned 18-years-old, he was not legally positioned to assume custody. Their uncle became the younger boy’s guardian, separating the brothers during a period when each was attempting to understand how the same family could disappear around them. The distance remains present in ordinary ways. Baker cannot see his brother every day. He misses family time, conversations and part of young adulthood that do not wait for a production schedule to become convenient. If he cannot always be physically present, he wants the life he builds to remain visible enough to teach something in his absence. “He’s the reason why I carry myself the way I carry myself,” Baker said. “I’ve got to be that person. I can’t be setting any less of an example.” That responsibility reaches into how he speaks and what he allows into his life. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker The example is not meant to prescribe a particular career. He could pursue any honest work. What he aims to demonstrate is understanding the discipline required to choose a life intentionally. He wants his brother to know the finished result did not appear without a cost. There was homelessness, uncertainty and rejection. Some decisions worked, and others created consequences. If the younger boy can see the full process, perhaps he can carry forward its useful pieces without repeating every painful one. “I’ve got to struggle for him to see what’s the right way,” He explained. “It kind of also gives him a path.” The role Baker occupies cannot be contained by one family title. “Whatever he needs me to be, I want to be that person,” he said. He calls his brother his second half. That description changes what that achievement means. Recognition may open doors, and money may provide security their family once lacked. Neither matters if obtaining it requires Baker to be someone he would not want his brother to follow. The responsibility to become that man begins before his day does. “Keeping God at the center of everything that you’re doing – that has to be your number one priority,” he said. “I pray before my feet touch the ground. I’m praying before I get in the car.” Faith provides the structure through which he understands the web between work, family and the losses that altered both. It also gave him somewhere to direct the questions that followed his decision to pursue creativity when nearly everyone around him believed he was making a mistake. His grandfather helped form that practice. Bigger describes him as deeply prayerful and wise, “everything I want to be as a man.” Prayer came from watching that example and from a family value centered around gratitude. Without it, he believes he would lack the guidance required to become everything. He and his family need him to be. To him, faith is not as foreign as people sometimes make it sound. Trust already structures ordinary life, even when no one names it. “You have faith in everything,” he expressed. “Every day, you have faith when you go to sleep. You have faith that you're going to wake up in the morning. When you get on that plane, you have faith that the pilot is going to land the plane safely. You have faith that when you're driving, everybody's going to stay in their lane. You have faith unknowingly every single day.” Baker intentionally chooses to make that faith deliberate. Looking back, he believes God was teaching him to remain where his feet were, be patient and recognize the value of steps that felt too small while he was taking them. Immediate success, in his view, would have removed the meeting created by waiting. “How would it be if God gave us everything we asked for today?” he asked. “It wouldn't mean anything. It's like giving somebody plastic flowers. They don't mean as much because you know they last forever.” Real flowers matter partly because they do not remain unchanged. Their impermanence creates the need to notice them while they are alive. Faith, however, is not something. Baker believes God forces upon a person. “I think God is super polite,” he expressed. “He doesn't come barging in. He waits at the door. You've got to let him in.” If his grandfather gave him the foundation of prayer, his grandmother gave him the language of humility. Be humble. Be honorable. Remember where you came from. The instruction remained as the rooms changed around them. He grew up, wearing the same clothes repeatedly and living without things others growing up possessed. Entering spaces filled with money, celebrity, and professional athletes did not erase the young person who knew what it felt like not to have enough. “I don’t care if I make the biggest movie in the world,” he said. “I’m still going to be me.” The program, as he understands it, is larger than any athlete, filmmaker, paycheck, or credit. Money can change with a person possesses without determining who that person is. He has met people whose wealth becomes their personality and others whose financial position says nothing about their courage. Humility also requires refusing to hoard access once it arrives. When friends expressed a desire to photograph professional athletes, Baker did not treat those rooms as something only he had earned the right to enter. He brought them onto projects with athletes like Surtain and allowed them to experience proximity someone else had once offered him. The instinct mirrors the generosity he once encountered from Skinner and Surtain. One provided a room where he needed somewhere to live. Both offered help and access without treating their positions as reasons to remain different. “I think these gifts aren’t just for us, but also to give and to spread,” Baker said. “That’s why I love being a creative. I get to spread these stories and this empowerment.” A door had opened for him. Holding it for someone else became part of what it meant to walk through. Most people will first encounter Baker through the polished version of his work: A film shared by an athlete, a campaign created for a brand or a name placed in the credits. A portfolio can tell them what he produces, but it cannot fully explain who had to survive to produce it. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker That visibility is necessary. It is also incomplete. “A lot of times, people love you for what you do, not who you are,” he reflected. “I want people to know me a little bit, scratch the surface.” Beneath the finished work is the son who found part of his mother in a stranger's photograph. There is a teenager who traveled to California without her, the young photographer who worked through the night, the struggling creative who continued delivering his best while at his worst. There is a stranger who accepted another stranger, spare room, a rejected college applicant, who entered the NFL through a path, no institution, how prepared for him, and the older brother attempting to become every person his sibling might need. There is also a man whose faith has taught him to place his feet on the ground only after praying over the day, waiting for them. If a viewer walks away from his art with anything, Baker hopes it is not only an understanding of his technical ability. He wants to work to reach whatever emotion that person was already carrying and give it somewhere to exist. “I just hope that when they look at my art, they feel something,” he said. “That it brings them joy, or it helps whatever emotion they're going through at the time. I just hope it causes impact and makes you want to rewatch it again and again.” The ambition is not simply to create imagery people remember. It is to create one that remembers them. Years before the NFL fields commercial sets and recognizable names that made strangers pay attention to his portfolio, A box fell open inside his grandmother's home. The face looking back did not belong to anyone he knew. But the care behind the image did. Photo/Video provided by Akeem Baker The camera she once carried became his way of moving through the world, but the deeper inheritance was never the object itself. It was the responsibility to notice, the willingness to feel and the choice to make another person believe their life was worth preserving. What began with grief carried Baker through trials and tribulations. What kept him moving was faith. Faith that another door exists to be beyond the one that closed. Faith that his gifts were meant to be shared. Faith that the life he cannot yet see was being formed beneath his feet. The frame now holds rooms he once had no way to enter. But the purpose remains where it began: In the hands of a son, a brother, a man, discovering that his mother had left him more than something to remember. She left him a way to make others feel remembered, too. And with the Lord always before him and at his right hand, Akeem Baker is becoming the man who shall never be moved.

Written by Alex Tran | Photos by Orchee Sorker | August 9th, 2026 Situated right on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin, La Crosse seems like your average small Midwestern city. From the cascading green forests that paint the rocky, rugged mountains to the fluffy snow layers in the winter, it is no wonder that 25-year-old Sawyer Utah can only reminisce about his hometown. While Utah may be considered young for the industry, he has already built a name for himself. Utah has been credited alongside fellow artist Zach Hood with writing and producing hits like “Middle of Nowhere” and “Beautiful As You,” garnering over 10 million combined streams. Now, Utah has produced and published two EPs, “WHEREVER U ARE ★” and “WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN ★,” gaining over three million streams collectively. With Utah’s new single “THRILL” released Aug. 7th, he sat down for two interviews with HAZZE Media, sharing highlights from his journey as a young artist and the numerous challenges along the way. Who is Sawyer Utah? Born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Utah was not born with music producer parents or someone with a foot in the industry. Utah credits growing up attending a Waldorf school for his music passion. “I think they so support the arts and just the creative side of things.” Utah says “not having as much homework and kind of having more outside time” encouraged him to pick up other hobbies, like playing the guitar. “We couldn't have screens there so it was just more of all arts and creativity and just letting our minds kind of figure things out. I think that had a big impact on why I just always came back to the guitar when I went home and that was, you know, writing songs or going to play open mics.” Utah’s time at Waldorf spearheaded his passion for music and the arts. After Utah’s mother bought him his first baby Taylor guitar, six-year-old Utah began practicing the guitar with an instructor and found comfort in the vibrating strings. Outside of Waldorf, Utah also recalled watching many episodes of American Idol, with former contestants like Chris Daughtry being one of the memorable clips he watched. Utah admits that, after some time watching the show, he applied online to be a contestant. However, with show choir and other responsibilities leaving Utah little time to prepare, he believes the lack of preparation was why he did not make it onto the show. While Utah has been open about going to a Waldorf school, he shared how even beyond his time at Waldorf he was getting support from his teachers and community around him. Utah recalls how a choir teacher in high school supported his song writing early on. “I just remember vividly in my senior year, I was writing songs and I was producing and stuff and I asked her, ‘is it cool, like once or twice a week, if instead of choir class, I go into this practice room’ and there was a little studio setup, and I was like, ‘is okay if I just write songs?’ And she was like, ‘yeah, it's all good.’ And so like, it was little things like that, that people just understood how inspired I was by music and stuff. And I'm so grateful for those people along the way, because, I mean, she didn't have to do that at all.” Despite many people within Utah’s community supporting his talents, the boundaries of his home town would soon expand. Travels with Utah Utah’s professional growth as an artist did not begin until his travels post-high school and well after the COVID-19 pandemic. Places like Los Angeles and New York City were places Utah spoke about fondly. Utah was “soaking in so much more different life and just being surrounded by so many different people,” which impacted his creative writing and creative outlets. However, Utah would often travel solo at such a young age, with minimal friends or family in many of these places he found himself at. Through songwriting, Utah coped with these moments of solace, with tracks like “Old Me” becoming byproducts of these solo writing sessions. Those moments did not deter Utah from traveling either. Utah had the opportunity to work with new people in the music industry, like Benzi Edelson, a music producer at Arcade Songs. While working with Edelson, Utah talked about how he created his first single “Nights Like This” and the inspiration behind the track. “I remember ‘Nights Like This’, we were doing such late nights. We were in Manhattan, I think it was like the 10th floor or something, so you could see the buildings literally in the middle of the city.” And, while recalling details about Edelson's old studio, like the H&M building across from them, he saw the inspiration for his first ever single. “And man, we would go up there and I remember making that song and just like looking over the city of Manhattan, it's like 1a.m. That's where ‘Nights Like This’ came from. I was literally just looking over the city, so inspired, it's like, ‘wow, like we're on top of New York City right now.’” As traveling continued to play a massive role within his career, Utah naturally decided it was time to move out of La Crosse, with his heart set on what is known as “Music City.” The Life Beyond La Crosse As Utah approaches his eighth year in Nashville, Tennessee, he continues to focus on building authenticity and his own identity as an artist. Utah and Hood have co-written and co-produced often, with their recent track, “DAREDEVIL,”marking their eleventh collaboration. Utah describes how these collaborations with artists go beyond making music with each other. “Any artist I'm working with has to feel comfortable with me and like telling their life story, really because the only way to get to the best inner lyric that we want to get to that connects with them and other people is through that. So, I think that's such an important part that I am always striving to make the room comfortable, whether it be just like their favorite drinks on hand or whatever it is, just always having things that make them in their best creative process…” While Utah is known for his collaborative work, his solo work is where his creativity and skills are on full display. His most recent EP “WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN ★”, features eight tracks from multiple periods in his life. While tracks like “LADY,” “CARS,” and “play with my heart” were created within six months of the original publishing of the EP, tracks like “circles” were created back in 2022. Rather than scrapping his old work, Utah held all of his incomplete work in a folder in case, upon revisiting, he could make it work. By reworking his older tracks and integrating them into his current projects, many of his songs become a reflection of his developing sound and production. When Utah does experience extended periods of writer's block, he resorts to partaking in his daily routine or hobbies, like skiing and occasionally driving an RC plane over the skies of Nashville. With several years of experience and two EPs under his belt, one must ask how Utah is able to navigate the pressures of the industry and being an artist in the 21st century. Where is Utah Now? Utah went into depth about the intricacies of the music industry. From publishing to labels and record production, it can be confusing for young artists with minimal experience. But, Utah also has to overcome a new endeavor many artists also are still figuring out: social media. Because of Utah’s limited access to a phone growing up, he discusses how he is still trying to strike a balance between promotional material and making his presence online feel authentic. “I sometimes feel like I'm a little behind when it comes to social media just as a whole. I've always learned things from people, but I think it will always be a work in progress for me. And I'm always just trying to as much as just represent myself when I'm posting and just try to have the online version of me be the same as who I am is like something I'm always trying to be better at and do. So, hopefully, someday I'll feel like ‘okay, it's exactly like me.’ I think it's closer than ever…” One way Utah is attempting to make up for his perceived lack of social media knowledge is by bringing his gratitude directly to his fans. Whether it is Utah trying to “respond to any message” he receives across his social media platforms or interacting with fans at past tour events, Utah says he wants to always give back to fans that express a deep connection to his music. That idea of giving does not stop at his fans. Utah expressed his desire to move the goalpost for himself but acknowledges he needs to give back to himself in a way that is uniquely him. “I think you can so easily just be caught in the, ‘... I need another, I need a big song, I need this, I need that, I need a video to go viral, all that stuff.’ But, trying to just stay in the moment and enjoy every step of the way is something I'm always thinking about. Like the goalpost thing, I think it’s right when you get something that you really want, right away I'm going to be like, ‘Oh, but what if I also do this next?’ and so it's like going to be forever… That's just how I am.” From the small recording booth in Utah’s high school to the studios in Nashville, he may have moved beyond the geographic boundaries of his hometown, but his love for community and being in the moment remains. Disclosure: The interview opportunity was facilitated by HAZZE’s Press Director, who also serves as the artist’s creative director. She did not participate in the writing or editing of this article. Editor’s note: This article was updated on Aug. 10, 2026, at 1:53pm to clarify that the releases referenced as albums are EPs. The artist informed HAZZE that Spotify and other online sources incorrectly classify the releases as albums.

by Ava Heaton | August 10 2026 Photo owned by Dallas Cowboys For decades, one of the safest bets in professional sports was playing at home. In the 80’s and 90’s, home venues were feared. Visiting teams walked into hostile environments, slept in subpar hotels and faced officials who were subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) swayed by tens of thousands of screaming local fans. Whether it was a National Basketball Association (NBA) court, a National Football League (NFL) field, or a National Hockey League (NHL) rink, playing at home offered a distinct edge. According to Statmuse, during the 1985-86 NBA season, the Boston Celtics led the league in home winning percentage at 97.6%. During the 2025-26 season however, the Oklahoma City Thunder led in the statistic with just an 81% winning percentage at home. Over the past two decades, sports analytics have revealed a quiet revolution: home-field, home-court, and home-ice advantages are shrinking rapidly. Across major leagues, home winning percentages have drifted closer to a coin toss than ever before. So what happened to the legendary power of playing at home? Seemingly the biggest factor in home advantage in the past was biased officiating. Referees and umpires are human, and humans naturally seek social confirmation. When 20,000 superfans roar in unison demanding a penalty in hockey or a pass interference call in football, officials experience subtle psychological pressure. However, modern sports technology has made it increasingly difficult for referees to have official bias. The evolution and normalization of video reviews and instant replay, allowing officials to overturn calls with ease leaves far less room for blatant bias. Subconscious mistakes made in the heat of the moment are routinely corrected by neutral video review centers. While not always perfect, the system has certainly helped the cause. Not to mention, there are so many ways to keep track of officiating accuracy now with X pages such as @UmpScorecards making it clear to the public which officials are more accurate in their calls. As discretionary calls dropped, the automatic edge for home teams shrank across all major sports. Photo owned by New York Knicks When considering home-field advantage, the subject of travel is another thing to take into account. In earlier eras, being the away team meant commercial flights, early morning check-ins, poor sleep hygiene, and limited food options. A hockey team on a four-game road trip or a football team crossing multiple time zones was physically compromised long before the opening whistle. Today, sports science has fundamentally altered the road trip experience across all leagues. Professional teams now fly on private planes customized with extra legroom, high-end catering, and tailored schedules. Plus, professional organizations employ sleep scientists and other specialists there specifically to help with recovery both physically and mentally. Not to mention they can take recovery equipment with them on the road and leagues have become a lot more forgiving when creating season schedules, splitting up travel days as ideally as possible. Because visiting athletes arrive healthier, better rested, and better recovered, the physical tax of being on the road has decreased. While psychological and travel-related advantages have faded, biology remains resilient. A small handful of franchises maintain a persistent, above-average home advantage: teams based at high elevation. Apr 21, 2026; Denver, Colorado, USA; Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon (29) controls the puck under pressure from Los Angeles Kings defenseman Cody Ceci (5) in the second period in game two of the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Ball Arena. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images The Denver Nuggets (NBA), Colorado Avalanche (NHL), and Denver Broncos (NFL) play a mile above sea level. Visiting players acclimated to sea-level oxygen pressures experience genuine strain, reduced oxygen saturation, and faster onset of fatigue at higher altitudes. Because technological advancements cannot change how human lungs absorb oxygen in thin air, altitude remains one of the few unhackable home advantages in modern sports. Home advantage is far from dead, but its nature has fundamentally changed. Arenas, stadiums, and rinks are no longer untouchable locations where victory is probable regardless of matchup quality. Fans still provide crucial emotional chants, and eliminating travel is impossible. However, through unbiased officiating data, sleep science, and modern tactics, visiting teams have successfully dismantled the invisible barriers that once made playing on the road so daunting. In today's sports landscape, playing at home offers familiarity, but victory still has to be earned entirely on the surface. Disclaimer: The views, analysis, and opinions expressed in this op-ed are of the writer. All information is for commentary and informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, professional, or investment advice. References to third-party sources and public figures are made for illustrative purposes and do not imply endorsement or verification by HAZZE MEDIA.

Interview by Holly Arend | August 8 2026 Photos provided by Jacob Trouba On canvas, Jacob Trouba is not the defenseman known for punishing hits and a hard edge. He is trying to slow things down, hold onto a moment long enough that it means something later. Trouba said he started painting about three years ago after a friend invited him to a studio, and what began as curiosity became a way to make something outside the pace and pressure of hockey. At first, he said, it was not about building a public identity. It was about finding a different kind of room to think in. “The story kind of connects the art,” Trouba said. “When you see the piece, the background and the story really kind of brings it full circle.” He described the paintings as a kind of visual journal, a record of what each season of his life felt like at the time. “I guess these are moments in my life,” he said. “It’s kind of like journaling, I guess, in a way.” He said he does not always think about preserving a moment while he is painting, but time changes the meaning of the work. What starts as an image becomes a memory, then a marker of where he was emotionally when he made it. “It’ll always kind of remain as my moment in time,” he said. That matters because Trouba has also spent much of his career dealing with how other people choose to see him. He said there has long been a focus on his physical style and the opinions that came with it, and that painting gave him a way to respond in his own voice. “You get put in a box or painted a certain way,” he said. “This was just a way of controlling the narrative.” Photos provided by Jacob Trouba For Trouba, that is part of the appeal. He is not just painting. He is complicating the easy version of himself. “There’s more to people, to athletes, to I guess everyone than just what you see on the surface,” he said. “Dig a little bit deeper, and you’ll find more about people.” What started privately eventually grew into something more public. Trouba said he first tried painting something for his son’s room, but the hobby expanded into a broader creative practice. He and his wife then built the Trouba Creative Expressions Art Program as part of their charitable work, giving adults with epilepsy a chance to create and share art. Photos provided by Jacob Trouba The most powerful part, he said, was not the idea on paper but the people standing in front of their own work. “To see how proud they were to show their work,” he said, “that was more rewarding than I could have thought.” He said the program also created conversations that made the project feel more personal, especially around epilepsy and shared experience. It became a place where art opened the door to something else, something more human and immediate. That same idea carried into Trouba’s first public exhibition, “Landing My Mark,” which opened in Manhattan and marked an important step in bringing the work beyond his own studio. The show gave the paintings a larger audience and gave the stories behind them a different kind of life. Photos provided by Jacob Trouba Now, he is preparing for what comes next. His upcoming show opens Aug. 8 at ASU Art Museum, another chance to put the work in front of people and let it speak on its own terms. His website, Jacob Trouba Art, also features limited-edition prints based on his canvases, extending that same idea in a different form. Trouba said the art and the website serve the same purpose, which is to make sure the story travels with the work. During the season, he keeps the creative side alive by reading books, watching videos and visiting museums on road trips or off days. In the summer, he paints more often and gives that side of his life more room. “I think it’s helped my athletic side,” he said. “It’s healthy. There’s a lot of hockey in here, but it’s just kind of a different mental head space.” That balance seems to be the point. Hockey and art are not competing identities for Trouba. They are different ways of making sense of the same life. One is force and reaction. The other is patience and reflection. Together, they give him a fuller picture of himself. For Trouba, the canvas is not an escape from hockey. It is another way to keep track of where he has been, what he has felt and how he wants the story to travel with him.