Brenau’s track and field coach, Richard Ludwig, is hoisted into the air by the Brenau ladies after they won the SSAC Championship Saturday, April 27 and Shorter University in Rome, Ga.

 Women’s track and field coaches from the Southern States Athletics Conference named Brenau University’s Richard Ludwig the Southern States Athletics Conference “Coach of the Year” after he guided the Golden Tigers first-year track and field team to a decisive conference championship.

The conference, part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, announced the honor here during the annual SSAC Spring Awards ceremony.

Although the 2012-13 season was Ludwig’s first at Brenau, he is no novice to the sport. He started his coaching career as an assistant for the University of Georgia men’s team, which he had previously captained under legendary track coach Spec Towns as a four-year standout in the long jump and triple jump. During his two years as an assistant to Towns’ successor Lewis Gainey, the Bulldogs won two back-to-back Southeastern Conference championships.

Ludwig, who was a horticulturalist and educator by profession before his “retirement” in 2011, never left coaching. He piloted or assisted through the years with high school and club teams. That put him in good stead, said Brenau Athletics Director Mike Lochstampfor for quickly recruiting and developing a highly competitive team at Brenau, built mostly around versatile, athletic freshmen and transfer students, in a very short time.

“Rick Ludwig not only can spot good talent,’ said Lochstampfor. ‘He also can spot talents the athletes themselves did not know they had.”

Indeed, several of the Tigers either won or placed highly in SSAC championship meet events in which they had never participated prior to Ludwig’s nudging them into it. As a result, the Golden Tigers dominated the April 26-27 meet, scoring 352.5 points – more than three times the 113 total scored by runner-up William Carey University of Hattiesburg, Miss.

Ludwig, a widely-published and nationally televised horticulturist for a decade, and professor at Gwinnett Technical College from 1985-2010, coached the Lanier Lightning and Lanier Running Club Junior Olympics. He was a volunteer coach at Brenau’s Georgia hometown Gainesville High School and coached at North Hall High School in Gainesville in the 1980s.

At Brenau, he said, he was able to pull together “a young, feisty team,” which he credits for the Golden Tigers’ success.

“These young Brenau women proved to be fierce competitors,” said Ludwig. “They scare me a little bit. They hate to lose.”

Although the principal purpose of the festival is to determine which two of about 40 cooking teams win the championship and an automatic bid to compete in a national cooking competition in Las Vegas in the fall, there will be plenty of activities to keep kids occupied while adults sample well-smoked ribs, shoulder and whole hog pulled pork.

Wallace Field, adjacent to the Brenau Amphitheatre turns into the kid zone with inflatable obstacle courses, games, hula-hoops, water splash fun, music and family friendly hands on activities.

“Yes, the balloon ladies will be there again,” said Christina White, who oversees the children’s activities at the festival. White referred to the balloon artist Kathy Hoffman and Sandy Caldwell from A Tricky Business. “They’re always a favorite of the kids.”

The HandStand wax art company helps anyone create a colorful, non-toxic, exact hand wax replica. Local friends at Interactive Neighborhood for Kids in Gainesville will offer activities, too.

In addition to more than two dozen vendors selling everything from barbecue rubs and spices to hand-crafted jewelry, Saturday also features continuous musical performances in the amphitheater by favorite local bands like Back in Time, a nine-piece rock-n-roll group. Back in Time, which has a four-piece horn section, includes Jonathan Jackson and Mercer Crook. The group performs at noon on the stage.

The Fiddleheads, a group of bluegrass-inspired, genre-crossing musicians from Dahlonega, Ga., perform at 2 p.m. Regional singer/songwriters from the John Jarrard Foundation play on the amphitheatre stage throughout the day.

Gainesville’s Old Friends Car Club hosts a classic car show from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the front lawn of the picturesque historic university.

Of course, there will be plenty of barbecue for show and sale.

Cook teams from five states will battle for Memphis Barbecue Network and Georgia Barbecue Association amateur and professional titles as well as rights to compete at the World Food Championship in Las Vegas.

Although the $5 admission charge doesn’t cover food costs, many of the competing teams traditionally provide samples throughout the day after their entries pass under the noses of the judges.

In addition, two award-winning vendors from previous Brenau competitions — Rick’s Smokin’ Pig from Gainesville and Dixie Que from Macon will have plenty of barbecue for sale.

The admission charge on Saturday, May 25, and other proceeds go to defray costs of student scholarships at Brenau.

For more information, consult the Web site at www.brenaubbq.org and be sure to follow the Brenau Barbecue festival on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #brenaubbq.

A model wearing an outtfit from Brenau fashion merchandising student Candice Jenkin’s line ‘Freedom’ stirkes a pose at the end of the catwalk in the historic Pearce Auditorium on Brenau University’s Gainesville campus.

Fashion-Schools.org, the national online clearing house for information about colleges and universities for students interested in fashion industry careers named Brenau No. 67 in the nation in fashion merchandising and No. 75 in fashion design in its recently published issue listing the Top Fashion Schools in the United States.

Also, education-portal.com cited Brenau’s fashion merchandising program in the Top 20 listing of the Top Fashion Marketing College in the country. Only two other Georgia institutions, the University of Georgia and Savannah College of Art and Design, made the list.

Fashion-Schools.org stated that its goal for publishing the list was to provide fashion design and merchandising students with “a starting point” for identifying programs of interest by applying some subjective criteria for evaluating those programs. The publication considered more than 200 schools in the United States that offer fashion programs.

Its selection criteria included academic reputation, admission selectivity, depth and breadth of the program and faculty, and geographic location – the latter of which, the editors conceded, showed heavily toward schools located in New York, Los Angeles and other “fashion meccas” in the country where students have networking opportunities to top professionals in the field and enormous internship opportunities in the profession.

Still, said Lori Gann-Smith, the fashion design program director at Brenau, this is significant recognition for the university.

“We are competing with everyone in the United States that has these kinds of programs, even the ‘big guys,’” she said. “This means we are on the map.”

Fashion-Schools.org provides information on fashion schools that have proven to provide excellent career preparation for fashion careers listed. On its site prospective students can review curriculum and degree information, and request information directly from the schools in its network.

The organization did feel compelled to elaborate on its criteria for making the top 50 selection.

From left, Junjun Tong who showed her line motion Motion & Memory, Candice Jenkins displayed Freedom and Amanda Maddox showed her collection Gehenna during the 2013 Brenau Collaborative Fashion Show.

“As we researched schools and spoke with working professionals in the industry, it became increasingly evident that the location of a school matters in the fashion industry, perhaps even more so than in many other professions,” the publication said on its website. “For example, students who attend school in a fashion mecca such as New York City, or to a lesser extent in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Chicago (to name but a few), often have a distinct advantage over students in other parts of the country in terms of networking opportunities, internships, and career specific part-time work.”

That, however, does not mean that to succeed students must attend one of these schools, Fashion-Schools.org said.

Education-portal.com indicated it based its selection on the breadth of the program offered.

Education-portal.com is a leading online resource for students and professionals looking for information about colleges, degree programs, and general career information.

Karen Garbow, assistant professor and director of Brenau’s fashion merchandising program, said the site is highly regarded as authoritative and nonbiased in its approach to present higher education and career planning information for students and professionals in the field.

“I have been impressed by their research and by their detailed articles” on fashion merchandising, which Education-portal.com calls fashion marketing, Garbow said. “They seem to focus on curriculum, career preparation and recognitions [of the higher education institution] by other organizations like U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review,” both of which list Brenau as one of the top universities in the Southeast.

“A program in fashion marketing,” the Education-portal.com states on its Website, “focuses on the relationship between fashion trends and how they are sold to the consumer. Students learn about target markets, business results and strategies in order to meet consumer demand. Courses often cover the basics of fashion and textiles, merchandise planning and finance. Graduates can work in retail buying, management, fashion consulting, advertising, product design and merchandising for apparel manufacturers.”

Both the fashion design and fashion merchandising programs at Brenau lead to Bachelor of Arts degrees.

Rick Shaw of Rick’s Smokin’ Pig is not only competing in the Brenau Barbecue Championship but is selling his barbecue to patrons during the festival on Saturday as well.

Two teams competing in this year’s Brenau Barbecue Championship will also be selling their pork to hungry visitors at the event. But it’s almost by accident that either team exists.

Rick Shaw of Rick’s Smokin’ Pig in Gainesville said he’d been smoking chicken, pork and steaks since the 1960s. But after tasting success with a first runner-up finish for pulled pork in the inaugural Brenau barbecue event, Shaw decided to open a restaurant on John Morrow Parkway in Gainesville.

Rick Godfrey of Dixie Que BBQ in Macon said his first attempt at competitive cooking didn’t go well. But the failure spurred him to learn more about cooking techniques and cuts of meat. Now his team is a regular winner on the barbecue circuit.

Both Smokin’ Pig and Dixie Que will sell pork plates and sandwiches to customers on Friday and Saturday at this year’s Brenau Barbecue Championship. Both will also be competing in the competition, where they have previously won awards.

Choosing the vendors who’d be allowed to sell to the public was a deliberate process, said Jim Barco, coordinator of the Brenau Barbecue Championship.

“You want to look at who does barbecue, but more importantly who does barbecue well,” Barco said.

Barco said both teams will make world-class barbecue for sale, and he’s particularly proud that a local team was chosen.

“It behooves our event to support local establishments when they can help you fill a need,” Barco said. “We didn’t want to just go with out-of-town vendors.”

Shaw said he’s grateful for the opportunity. He credits his team’s success in the 2009 Brenau Barbecue Championships for his decision to open a restaurant.

“We gave away 400 samples of sandwiches that year, and the reception was amazing,” Shaw said. “We had a lot of friends who encouraged us to open a restaurant, and it all come about because we competed at Brenau.”

But smoking meat is nothing new to Shaw, who started the technique as a hobby in the 1960s. Naturally, being from Gainesville, he smoked a lot of chicken. But he also worked to perfect pork and beef cuts, too, and eventually went into catering.

Rick Godfrey shows off his barbecue during the 2012 Brenau Barbecue Championship where he took first place in the ribs category.

“Catering business is really what we try to get,” said Shaw, who does the cooking for the restaurant while his son, Steven, helps run the business side of the operation. “We can cater just about anything you want, not just pork.”

Shaw describes a three-day process to get his barbecue to a customer’s plate. The first day is all about meat preparation. The second day is for cooking. Day three is for serving.

Godfrey’s Dixie Que BBQ team is much newer to the competition circuit. Six years ago, the team, which is made up mainly of family members, entered a barbecue competition near Macon.

“It didn’t go well,” Godfrey recalls now with a hearty laugh.

But the team, which includes Godfrey, his wife, his brother-in-law and his mother-in-law, enjoyed the cooking and failure wasn’t an option. They devoted time to learning as much as they could about all aspects of competitive cooking. Now the team is a regular winner at competitions.

For Godfrey, spending so much time on the barbecue circuit has been rewarding. It’s allowed him to travel and make friends with common interests.

“It’s been great spending time with some of the best cookers in the world,” he said.

In addition to selling their barbecue, both Rick’s Smokin’ Pig and Dixie Que BBQ will be competing. Godfrey said Dixie Que will compete in every category, three in the Memphis Barbecue Network competition and three in the Georgia Barbecue Association competition. Shaw said Smokin’ Pig will compete in the three GBA categories.

Barbecue won’t be the only food for sale. Burgers, hot dogs and sausages will be available, too, as well as a variety of snacks and drinks. Other vendors will be selling crafts, art, jewelry, soaps and pottery.

The Brenau Barbecue Championship begins with a preview party from 6 to 10 p.m. on Friday, May 24. Tickets to the preview are $10. The main event is Saturday, May 25 starting at 10 a.m. Saturday admission is $5 and kids ten and under are free. Both days feature music by local artists, family friendly activities, and a car show Saturday afternoon.

For more information on the Brenau Barbecue Championship, including a schedule of events and directions, visit brenaubbq.org and find us on Facebook at facebook.com/brenaubbq.