Home > John Hawkes Archive

Three Days With Hoya Blue
By John Hawkes

Prologue (May 4, 2005): Hoya Blue Elections, McDonough Gymnasium

As I walked out of McDonough Gymnasium after the Hoya Blue elections last May, I couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief that I'd actually seen the day that this would happen.

I didn't vote when the "election" was actually conducted. And I went to the initial "Town Hall" meeting-at which the current members of Hoya Blue took suggestions from the audience on how to improve the club and candidates were proposed for each of the offices up for grabs-determined that I was going to watch the proceedings in silence.

That didn't last long.

I knew Hoya Blue was broken. I didn't start writing Generation Burton columns because I had a bad day at a basketball game during Craig Esherick's last season. I started writing because I thought Hoya Blue had failed in its job of getting students excited about Georgetown athletics. It wasn't fun to go to games anymore.

Well, when I wrote a recap of the final home basketball game of this past season, I ended it with the simple phrase: "It's fun again." True, some of that had to do with the John Thompson III-led Hoyas' improvement on the court. But the reality was that in the student section a group of fans had taken charge and in a variety of ways were making the experience a lot more enjoyable for every student at the MCI Center. They led by example, painting their faces, wearing funny costumes, and encouraging other students to be loud and proud Hoya fans. They worked tirelessly during Georgetown's NIT run to create signs encouraging students to buy tickets to two once-in-a-generation home postseason games. They even had a trademark shirt that could be traced directly to a few of their own that now comes standard with every season ticket package.

Except these guys weren't Hoya Blue. These were the guys sitting all around me in the audience in a little meeting room in McDonough listening to Hoya Blue fake it.

So I spoke up. I didn't say "Hey, vote for these guys!" I didn't even directly say: "Hey, don't vote for those guys up there!" But the point needed to be made: we were all in McDonough on a weekday night near exam time because Hoya Blue was in fact broken. And I thought it was only fair that some people who were really dedicated to fixing it the right way be given a shot at it.

I wonder to this day whether the old Hoya Blue board saw the writing on the wall at that meeting, when so many students who'd had enough of nothing from the club showed up to voice their frustration.

As it turned out, neither of the candidates proposed by the old Hoya Blue board showed up for the election meeting. And thus, without a single speech, any debate, and really any suspense, Hoya Blue was in new hands.

I've watched the group of students who would now likely form most of the Hoya Blue board develop over the past few years. I know most of them, and as a matter of disclosure I've shared ideas with them in the past on how they might approach running Hoya Blue now that they're in charge. I've also had the chance during the summer to observe the discussions they've had amongst themselves and the plans they've developed for the new school year. And I was curious as to how they'd all play out.

During the first week of the new school year, as 1,600 or so potential members of the next great Generation of Georgetown student fans arrived on the Hilltop for the first time, I spent three separate days volunteering with Hoya Blue. I wanted to see how this group of die-hard student fans I'd watched over the past year or even longer in some cases would handle their first moment in the spotlight. I wanted to see if the Class of 2009 would gobble up tickets and t-shirts and come out in full force to Hoya Blue's events.

I wanted to get my hands on a new "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirt.

The following is an account of the three days I spent with Hoya Blue.

Day 1 (Sunday, August 28): Hoya Blue Table outside O'Donovan Cafeteria

I'm wearing a yellow collared shirt this afternoon, left over from my morning bookstore shift across town. I realize rather quickly that it isn't going to cut it.

As I turn the corner outside of McCarthy Hall, I'm greeted from down the walkway by Kurt Muhlbauer and Tom Ryan, the new President and Treasurer of Hoya Blue. Both have worked tirelessly over the summer planning to the finest detail every aspect of Hoya Blue's efforts for the new sports season-Tom by regularly meeting with officials from McDonough, Kurt by single-handedly keeping every internet cafe in Warsaw in business sending dispatches across the Atlantic.

It doesn't surprise me that Kurt went to such lengths to keep up with the club. After his Hoya Blue Board application was rejected at the beginning of his freshman year, he showed up in the front row at every game during the winter and at several Hoya Blue volunteer events, earning the attention of the club's leadership, who invited him to be on their Board for the Spring semester. By the end of the year, Hoya Blue's incoming President had invited Kurt to become Basketball Chair for the 2004-2005 Season. It was a short and unhappy stay: the Board members seldom emailed Kurt or asked for his help at events; he recalled to me at the time that he wasn't even aware Hoya Blue was performing at the NSO Pep Rally during his year as basketball chair. So Kurt set to work on his own, becoming something of an informal leader of the group of fans at the front row of most basketball games.

You could reasonably argue that Kurt's the most recognizable student basketball fan at Georgetown. Much of that has to do with the Troll-Doll blue wig he wears to games. And yet as loud and boisterous as Kurt is at games, when he takes the wig off he's a decidedly mild-mannered, even shy kid, a sort of Clark Kent to his Superfan alter ego.

Kurt always seemed predestined to one day be the President of Hoya Blue. Tom, on the other hand, seemed genuinely surprised when he was nominated as a candidate for Hoya Blue's Treasurer position at that first Town Hall meeting. It wasn't for any lack of will-he's painted his face more than a few times, shall we say. He just didn't seem sure he had the credentials for the job at first. One thing he does have that has proven invaluable so far in his tenure, however, are his contacts. Over half of the voting rolls on the night of the Hoya Blue elections were students there thanks to Tom's personal "Get Out The Vote" drive. And Hoya Blue could hardly have transitioned as smoothly into the new year without his constant meetings with the Student Activities Commission and GUSA. For all his apprehension about fulfilling his technical job description, Tom's most useful role in Hoya Blue may turn out to be the outgoing "come one, come all" carnival barker for one of Georgetown's biggest year-long shows.

"Hey, it's The Architect!" Stephen Fraser calls out from the entrance to the O'Donovan cafeteria.

Stephen is the man responsible for giving me the nickname that I absolutely can't stand. Judging by his devious smile when he says hi to me, and the fact that my unwanted nickname was the last thing he'd said to me the previous time I'd seen him during the summer, he's well aware that it bugs me. On the plus side, "The Architect" is slightly better than the "The Ambassador," the nickname he gave to himself during the Hoya Blue elections in May.

I've written before on why I don't think "The Architect" is the most useful nickname for what Hoya Blue should be trying to accomplish. Not that I don't think it's crucial for Kurt, Tom, Stephen and everybody else to set up a solid foundation for how the club is going to be run. But for the moment, the freshmen walking by our table don't particularly care about whether they can be the Village C Dorm Captain of Hoya Blue. They want a shirt. They want some tickets. They want you to scream things at them that end in "Awesome!"…"Kick-ass time!!"…and…"Freakin' Awesome!!".

Hoya Blue doesn't need a bunch of Architects to do that. They need a bunch of dedicated fans who are willing to go to work making games fun, making SAC Fairs a little more entertaining and interactive, getting the word out about every single sporting event they can on campus.

Carnival Barkers might come in handy, actually.

Freshmen welcome weeks tend to be an psychological roller coaster, combining the "Are We There Yet?" restlessness of family road trips, the interminable lines and bureaucratic nonsense of your local DMV, and the social anxiety of the first day of High School. Usually within the first 15 minutes. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the two dominant emotional responses exhibited by incoming freshmen during welcome week are polar opposites of each other.

I've already experienced one of these this morning at the bookstore-nervous frustration. I find myself more than once in the center of a heated argument between parents insistent that their son or daughter shop for their textbooks now, that they'll all feel much better if they just go get some lunch at the Alumni Association event, that their child is going to be sorry in October if they don't have a nice blue comforter for their bed. Or a popcorn popper. The best strategy I've found in dealing with these awkward moments as a bystander is to be diplomatic if asked, but completely invisible otherwise.

I'm about to experience the other, happier side of the spectrum, which usually comes into play around the time mom and dad pack up the family SUV and say their teary farewells. As it so happens, on my way through the Southwest Quad just an hour ago, I'd recognized the trademark Marriott plastic lunch boxes, a sure sign that the NSO Farewell Lunch was well underway. Goodbye, mom and dad. Hello, nervous excitement. This would be the part where visibility becomes your friend.

Hoya Blue has run four tables since the beginning of freshman move-in, hoping to tap the collective nervous excitement on campus. They've spread themselves across campus in pursuit of this goal, tabling on the Harbin and Darnall patios, Copley Lawn, and the Village C Stairs. Only a rainy Saturday afternoon that kept them out of the New South courtyard prevented them from pulling off a clean sweep of the freshman dorms.

I first spoke to Kurt late on Friday night, the first of Freshman Move-In. I made the mistake of revealing to him that I had made a friendly wager on the number of student season tickets Hoya Blue would sell to freshmen during NSO. The over/under was 30, and I informed him that I took the under-figuring most new students would be too preoccupied with moving in to pay attention to the Hoya Blue tables, and that many would need to be "converted" to becoming season basketball ticket holders.

He laughed at me.

Turns out I lost the bet within four hours.

On the first night of tabling, Hoya Blue sold 37 season ticket packages to freshmen who hadn't even unpacked their twin double-long sheets. By the time I leave this afternoon, well over 100 freshmen are now proud Georgetown basketball season ticket holders, over 250 have signed up for Hoya Blue's mailing list, and some 200 have purchased the new and improved "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirts. The "new and improved" part of these shirts, as each Hoya Blue staffer will proudly remind me and anyone who will listen throughout the day, is their prominent use of…yes…BLUE and GRAY in the design.

In fact, within a few minutes at the table, I already see several students pass us sporting their new blue and gray threads.

I'm now positive of it-the yellow collared shirt has got to go.

Fortunately, I never go anywhere without my trusty "We Are Georgetown" shirt, the identity of which has become so closely linked to its conceptualist that the Gray and Blue garment is popularly referred to as a "Kurt Shirt".

When I think about it, last year's "Kurt Shirt" slogan: "Some Have Forgotten. We Will Remind Them" wouldn't be such a bad motto for Hoya Blue to adopt for themselves this year.

Today, Kurt, Tom, and Stephen are working a single Hoya Blue table in front of the O'Donovan Cafeteria. It's a humble little operation: the new "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirt and a "Kurt Shirt" laid out next to stacks of blue Student Season Ticket order forms and a standard-issue email sign up list. There's a homemade banner-blue with gray spray paint-but it's nearly impossible to read and we spend most of the day standing in front of it as it is. In short, we have every appearance of a club having just set up shop on campus. I'm reminded that despite the fact each person I'm sitting with has known and worked with each other in some way on building the new Hoya Blue for nearly a year, they've really only been able to do it in an official capacity, all together, for a couple of days.

Fortunately, they couldn't have picked a better time or place to set up shop. The New Student Convocation has ended a few hours ago, and scores of newly-independent freshmen are flowing every which way through the Harbin-Village C-New South axis of campus in one big Blue and Gray cattle call.

I tabled a couple of years at SAC Fair for Georgetown's College Bowl team. It was always a tricky proposition figuring out what to do with the big list of e-mails we collected at the end of the day. After all, if we got, say, 100 e-mails, experience had taught us we'd be lucky to keep five people on the team by the end of the year. How were we supposed to figure out which e-mails represented the students that would eventually be superstars for the team, and which were kids who just wanted to swipe a few Starburst from our candy pile?

It's all in their approach. You can always tell by the first sentence out of a perspective member's mouth how truly excited they are about joining your club. There was always this one thing they could say where you knew they were a keeper, that they were going to be a key member of your group…

"Hey, you guys are Hoya Blue, right? I've been looking all over for you! I definitely want to do this!"

That's a keeper.

Time and time again this afternoon, student after student tells us how excited they are to see us, and how eager they are to sign up with Hoya Blue. Of course, we get their email addresses. We figure we've got a bunch of keepers today.

Hoya Blue's much different than College Bowl. As a matter of fact, it's different than any club on Georgetown's campus. Unlike your average campus activity, which necessarily has a limited appeal-people who like ballroom dancing, Republicans, Democrats, folks who can expertly grill meat-Hoya Blue's appeal is the Georgetown campus.

Sure, there would seem to be a pre-disposition towards the sports fan-the current Hoya Blue website (which Tom is housing temporarily at a tripod.com address while the club awaits an official university address) describes the club's charge as: "promoting all Georgetown sports and creating an exciting atmosphere at games."

But there's more to the mission than just filling seats. There's a certain pitch I hear often this afternoon-one I've heard from Hoya Blue members in some form since I was at my own Freshman Orientation back in the fall of 2000. It's a sort of rambling, stream-of-consciousness flow that's remarkably consistent over time, and surprisingly prescient when it comes to a simple question:

"So what do you guys do, anyways?"

"Well…we go to basketball games, football games, soccer games, lots of stuff…and we go crazy in the student section…we try to get everyone involved in spirit on campus…we just have a great time."

That last part always stuck with me more than any other. Because it's the one universal message that cuts across all those differing interests and personality types at Georgetown. Even the most die-hard Hoya Blue member knows not everyone on campus follows sports. And, sadly, the cubicles and study lounges of Lauinger Library are chock full of studious folks who care less about school spirit than finishing their dissertation. But below every superficial exterior, we're all college students after all. We all like to have fun.

And that's what Hoya Blue is offering people, when you get right down to it. Something simple-something fun-that the entire campus can get behind.

Well, that and some really nice looking shirts.

It turns out the Blue and Gray cattle call suits Tom rather well. As he tells us several times during the day, he comes from a family that includes a large number of car salesmen. True to form, he puts on the charm and puts more than a few students in a brand new 2005 Hoya Blue shirt. He's the vocal presence today. Kurt, for his part, eagerly gives his own spin on the "we go crazy" speech dozens of times during the day, caught up in his own excitement at having so many visitors. Steve spends his time patiently guiding students through the order forms and entering an endless stream of credit card numbers into Hoya Blue's notebook. For every set of season tickets Hoya Blue sells today and throughout the year, they'll receive roughly five bucks to put towards their club's budget. Each t-shirt sold also brings them six dollars closer to their goal of breaking a profit on their club as soon as possible.

My favorite experience today comes in the late afternoon. I'm half-watching as a freshman co-ed who looks like she's visiting the Hoya Blue table by way of the designer boutiques of M Street receives the standard "we go crazy" speech. I can't imagine for the life of me seeing her at a basketball game. And yet, somehow, via the sheer persuasive power of Hoya Blue (or perhaps, a little boost from her dear friend 'Daddy's Bank Account'), she's about to become a proud owner of student season tickets.

"Wow, check that out," my girlfriend Ali, who's finished moving into her dorm room six stories directly above our table and has joined us, whispers to me.

"What?"

"That chick's paying for season tickets with a Black Am-Ex card. You know how much you have to spend to even have one of those?"

Only at Georgetown.

We were originally supposed to close up shop today at 4pm. Then it became 4:30. Then 5:00. Every time our newly-imposed deadline approaches, Kurt seems reluctant to leave the table. You just never know when a new member is going to walk by. And so we wait. Just another half hour. Another few minutes. You never know.

Sure enough, at around 5:15, small packs of freshmen begin to congregate on the patio of the O'Donovan Cafeteria, waiting for a dinner session with their Orientation Advisors.

At this point, we miss Tom, who's taken his used-car salesmanship to Safeway to buy groceries. None of us are exactly moving the product despite a bumper crop of customers. Without our big mover, we get help from a new source.

I overhear an Orientation Advisor chatting with his group, and I happen to catch his eye. He stops mid-sentence, as if he's realized he's completely forgotten the most important detail in a story, and tells his group:

"Oh yeah, have all of you guys signed up for Hoya Blue yet? These guys are awesome…"

Yep, they go to all the basketball games. They go crazy in the student section. They try to get everyone on campus involved in school spirit. It's an awesome club and a great time.

It's contagious. By the time the final shift of new students belly up to the pasta bars in Leo's at a quarter of 7:00, I've heard the speech close to a dozen times from OA's. Maybe Hoya Blue is that missing detail in the story about how to become part of the campus community.

We finally close up shop at sunset, huddled around Kurt's laptop, watching clips of highlights he's saved from last season on his computer. I've heard rumors of the legendary half-hour montage, complete with a musical soundtrack, that he's made for the 2004-2005 season. I'm also aware that he's contributed several of these clips to Hoya Blue's slideshow presentation Tom's putting together for Tuesday night at the NSO Pep Rally.

For the day, Hoya Blue sells 50 "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirts to students-slightly down from the previous two days of move-in, when they sold a total of 150, but an impressive total nonetheless when you throw in several pages worth of e-mails and a fresh stack of season ticket order forms.

I start thinking of who I can use as my proxy to buy student season tickets this year. And wondering how early I'm going to have to get to the MCI Center to beat all these kids in line.

To be continued...