Last week I found myself on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. I was covering the men’s basketball playoff game at UMass-Darmouth: innocent enough. But as I took my seat in the relatively quiet gym during the final seconds of the Keene State/Rhode Island College game, the atmosphere began to change.
Student fans started pouring into the gym and before long I was surrounded by super-fans of all sorts. Some toted homemade megaphones, others carried the distinct smell of booze, but all of them were there with one prerogative: to root for their beloved Corsairs – loud and hard. When the Corsairs finally came bursting out of their locker room and rap music blared over the speakers at what seemed like three trillion decibels and the railings on the bleachers rattled with excitement, I remembered what March Madness is all about.
Sure, UMass Dartmouth can’t hold a candle to schools like Duke or North Carolina, but, oddly enough, it would be hard to imagine that the Cameron Crazies are, in fact, any more crazy than the Corsair faithful.
The crowd got a little out of hand at times, screaming obscenities at referees and generally forgetting fan decorum. But it wasn’t that bad. Certainly nothing that would require mothers to cover their children’s ears or that might provoke the super-sensitive to pack up and head home. The atmosphere inside that gym, cultivated by 2,000 fans – 1,993 of them wearing Dartmouth blue and white – was something that this school is sorely missing.
I may have been on the wrong side of the tracks, but somehow, some way, that side of the tracks didn’t look half bad once I was there. And I know the whole “school spirit” issue has been beaten to death here, that everyone knows we’re just a bunch of non-traditional students who work full-time and can’t be bothered by the juvenile (read: sports).
That’s hogwash.
I’m well aware that only a small number of our students actually live on campus, somewhere in the neighborhood of 15% and that our average student is 28 years old. But no statistic can encompass apathy. And if we’re going to have sports teams – and pretty darn good ones at that – then we should at least do them the service of trying, in our own way, to cultivate a respectable atmosphere.
Because, point blank, a little pride makes the experience (and I dare say the performance) of the students and athletes better.
It’s time that our greatest assets are marketed and exploited. Not many schools can boast the number of exceptional athletes that we can. Not many schools can claim that they have Caterina and Coppenrath, Kynoch and Kent, Gordon and Gilbert, a pair of Wheelers and a New England champion like Mike Morin.
It is no small wonder that USM sports can be so successful, as exemplified by this winter’s season in particular, despite empty gyms and an apathetic fan-base. And while I do not expect things to change anytime soon with a looming budget crisis and the same old excuses garnering more rhetorical weight, I do think it is appropriate to underscore the dedication these athletes have.
It’s pretty obvious that the Wheeler brothers don’t run miles upon miles in the summer for the sake of gaining campus-wide notoriety and that Mike Morin doesn’t dedicate himself to a regimen of blood and sweat to get patted on the back by adoring co-eds.
Rather, all of the jump shots and wristers, dumbbells and discuses are an effort by these athletes to put their teams on top. The least we can do is try to reward their efforts by, if not getting us exactly where UMass Dartmouth is, at least getting us on the right track.