King’s students rally for varsity athletes
Smaller universities struggle to promote school spirit through sporting events
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King’s varsity teams are used to seeing only a small crowd of fans at their games, but now they’re fighting the status quo. (Photo: Alyssa Feir)
Madeleine Boehrer plays rugby differently when someone’s watching. Like she’s on fire. Even if she can’t hear their cheers, knowing she has a few fans in the stands makes her care about the game a little bit more.
The third-year University of King’s College student usually only gets fired up like that at home games. And even then it’s usually a group of other King’s varsity athletes cheering her on.
“It’s sad when you’re at a game and you don’t have fans and the other team brought fans,” she says. “It just makes such a difference for an athlete to know that they have the support.”
That’s why Boehrer, along with a group of about 30 student athletes, decided at the beginning of October to rally the troops and form the King’s Army – a group of students charged with supplying school spirit at every King’s varsity game.
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King’s fans, including these men’s rugby spectators, have been more vocal and visible around campus since the inception of the King’s Army. (Photo: Madeleine Boehrer)
The group’s formation coincides with an effort from the athletics department at King’s – a tiny liberal arts university known more for its philosophy curriculum than for its sporting events – to boost spectator attendance at varsity games.
Neil Hooper, King’s athletics director of 17 years, says carving a loyal fan base out of a school with 1,100 students has always been a struggle. The department is currently looking for sponsors to donate musical instruments so the school gym can host half-time “battle of the bands” contests during the Blue Devils’ basketball season, which began Nov. 1.
“We’re hoping that by bringing some musicians in that might be well-known around campus, that might draw some others in,” says Hooper, noting that the Blue Devils’ cross-town rivals, the Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) Mystics, consistently bring with them crowds of fans that more than double those rooting for King’s.
“If you listen to the cheering, there’ll be more people cheering for Mount Saint Vincent because they’ve outnumbered us in sheer volume of people that are out there,” he says. “We would like to see the day, obviously, when our fans would outnumber the opponents.”
Though the Mystics usually have a regular game fan base of about 75 to the Blue Devils’ 20, MSVU athletics director June Lumsden says her varsity program is in the same boat as Hooper’s when it comes to publicity.
“We’re so low on the pecking order. You have the Mooseheads, the university teams, the high schools and then we’re last,” she says of teams in the Atlantic Colleges Athletic Association league, which includes MSVU, King’s and seven other small Maritime universities and colleges.
“Neil and I both battle trying to get press. That’s our biggest challenge, is the media.”
Limited funds for athletics
Like King’s, MSVU receives little alumni funding for sports. With a student population of 4,800 and about 90 current varsity athletes, “it takes a long time to create an environment where alumni think about giving back,” Lumsden says. Yet, she says, the first question potential varsity recruits ask is how much money the school has devoted to sports.
The MSVU athletics department varsity program runs on an annual budget of just under $100,000 – a limited amount, Lumsden says, for providing sports and recreation at the university. Hooper refuses to disclose a figure for King’s athletics budget, though he says the department has enough money for day-to-day functions and necessary expenses, such as transporting teams to away games and paying for overnight stays. There’s no room for extras, he says, even if those extras are busloads of fans.
That’s where the King’s Army comes in.
After its first meeting on Oct. 22, the society, ratified under the King’s Students’ Union, stands at about 20 members, about a third of them King’s varsity players. The group now receives funding from the student union to organize fan buses and provide student taxi fares to away games, give away Blue Devils T-shirts and advertise around campus.
Boehrer says the group is designing a mascot costume – “it’s going to be something with a lot of spandex” – and planning a varsity-themed pub crawl for this spring.
King’s Army executive member Lia Milito, a fourth-year varsity basketball player and Contemporary Studies student, says it’s about time students stepped up for their love of sport.
“I think it’s something that people were waiting for,” Milito says. “I sort of see it as almost our fault that we have that assumption that we would be able to take it for granted that the university would support us. Why should the university support athletics more than anything else that students want to do?”
The first King’s Army fan bus left the campus quad at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 1 for the men’s rugby championships in Sackville, N.B., against the Mount Allison Mounties.
Updates
Main photo credit corrected Nov. 3.
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