As May graduation approaches, many students celebrate as their classmates engage in ring-by-spring culture.  

Ring by spring is a colloquial expression that frequently visits conversation every spring semester. The expression originally referred to the pressure seniors feel to be engaged before graduation. Now, it is more of a lighthearted joke about the rise of engagements in March and April. 

ACU is no stranger to ring by spring culture as students walk campus with new pretty rocks on their fingers and bright smiles on their faces entering a new stage of their lives.  

Hallie McLeod, junior nursing major from Tomball, and Gavin Webber, a senior at Texas A&M, got engaged over spring break. McLeod was proposed to at her family lake house. 

Hallie McLeod, junior nursing major from Tomball, poses in engagement photo during spring break. (Photo courtesy of Stephen Kim)

“He got down on one knee, and it was really sweet. And he washed my feet, and we prayed,” McLeod said. “Then, I went over to the house, and then it was all my extended family and my friends. So, it was really sweet.” 

McLeod’s sister surprised her with an engagement party, and then she celebrated with three of her fellow Kojies back in Abilene. 

“She had like orchestrated a surprise engagement party with all my friends and it was really sweet,” McLeod said. “I also got to do a little PTC sorority event.” 

McLeod and her fiancé are high school sweethearts – they met in an engineering class. Graduation will end four years of long distance dating, and they plan to marry on May 22, 2026. 

Avery Iles is the director of operations for ACU soccer and a graduate student in healthcare administration from Graham.  

“It’s real, it’s a real thing here,” Iles said. “A bunch of my friends got married and are living their best lives.” 

Iles and her boyfriend, J.D. Creel, met while they were earning their undergraduate degrees at ACU. 

Iles and Creel have dated for three years – Iles is patiently waiting. 

“I am suspecting a ring by spring,” Iles said. “It’s only taken me like six springs, but I guess I am on my way.” 

Amelia Leggett’s Bible, gifted to her by her fiance, sits at the table of her engagement location. (Photo courtesy of Reilly Erin Photography)

Iles said she predicts the proposal will happen within the next three weeks.  

“Three weekends,” Iles said. “I got three weekends to get it together.” 

ACU soccer player Amelia Leggett will be getting married in the summer of 2026. Leggett is a newly engaged junior nursing major from Wylie. Leggett’s fiancé and high school sweetheart, Canyon Hall, is a student at West Point.

Leggett was proposed to on her birthday weekend at Brockdale Park – a park Leggett and Hall would escape to when school was shut down in 2020.

Hall surprised her with a Bible engraved with Amelia Hall – her future name.

“He’s like, ‘Here open up your birthday present,’ and so I opened it up, and it’s a Bible,” Leggett said. “So that’s when I really realized like OK this is actually happening and I turned around and he already had the ring out and everything.”