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Three Days With Hoya Blue
By John Hawkes

Day 3 (Saturday, September 3rd): Hoya Blue BBQ and Women's Soccer Game vs. Fairleigh Dickinson, North Kehoe Field

This time, I am too early.

Not in the technical sense-the official email I get earlier in the week announces that Hoya Blue's barbecue will begin two hours before the start of today's 1:00pm women's soccer game against Fairleigh Dickinson.

Still, given that it's 11:30am on a Saturday morning and I'm on the Leavey Esplanade headed towards North Kehoe Field, arguably the most remote corner of Georgetown's Main Campus, I'm not even remotely surprised that nobody's shown up yet. So for the time being, I enjoy the view of the first bleachers going up on the home side of the Multi-Sport Facility.

I catch up with Hoya Blue about 10 minutes later. More accurately, I watch them from the road below as they roll their barbecue grill-on loan from the Georgetown University Grilling Society-across the Leavey Bridge.

I originally heard about "Hoya Blue Soccer Weekend" (which includes today's game and tomorrow's men's contest against American University) just over a month ago. It's one of four events-along with the Football Home Opener/Tailgate, a road trip to the Men's Basketball opener in Annapolis, and Hoya Blue's entire NSO presence-crammed into a single email sent by the Hoya Blue board on the first day of August to a list of fans mostly culled from the attendees of the Hoya Blue elections in May.

As far as August emails go, it's a veritable tour de force of promotional energy. And yet two days later, it's dwarfed by the 17-page "Hoya Blue 2005-2006" Plan/Budget that arrives in my inbox. For all of the mission statements, promotional events, and officer responsibilities laid out within, I'm struck by one particular line in the "Supply Costs" chart:

Oranges: 8 lbs, $3.79/4 lbs, $7.58

It's nice to see spirit clubs keeping up with old traditions.

While it's not explicitly stated at any point in Hoya Blue's official plans for the 2005-2006 school year, there's one theme that's dominated any grand discussion of Hoya Blue strategy I've had with Kurt and Tom since they were elected.

For too long, Hoya Blue has been criticized-rightly, in my view-for focusing almost exclusively on promoting men's basketball. In fact, I can trace the exact moment at which I threw up my hands and gave up on Georgetown's student spirit organization to a moment at their opening meeting of the 2003-2004 school year. There, as the dozen-or-so "board members" went in order describing Hoya Blue's activities for the year, only two activities-basketball and drinking-came up. That is, until a board member near the end was reminded of the football team, only to quickly dismiss attending games at Harbin Field. After all, nobody cared about the team, and they sucked any ways.

Kurt and Tom together came up with the idea that Hoya Blue should strive to have at least one "event" for each on-campus sport during the school year. That event could take a number of forms, with anything from a full-scale tailgate party to a pep rally to a kegs-and-eggs pre-game being fair game. But Hoya Blue would, ultimately, develop a presence at GU sporting events unlike anything previously in its history.

Today would be the first of Hoya Blue's "events" for an on-campus sport. And, as I saw the Hoya Blue wheeling the GUGS grill into the Leavey Center, I sensed it was going to be a challenge.

There are always going to be challenges if your club has a vision as ambitious as Hoya Blue's obviously is. Getting students up on a Saturday morning at 11:30am is a difficult task in itself. Doing it for a sport that doesn't occupy a high place on the totem pole of Georgetown student interest adds another layer of difficulty. Trying to pull it off on the first weekend of the school year, with no formal email list, no formal advertisement, and without even as much as a general meeting to work off of?

Yep, a challenge.

The Hoya Blue 2005-2006 Plan includes the plan for today's barbecue, which estimates about 100 people will show up. I get the feeling that 100 wasn't so much an estimate as a guess, and one that nobody seriously believed in the first place.

Nonetheless, there's work to be done. If I'm not convinced that Hoya Blue has the grass roots network together yet to pull off large-scale events like a barbecue, I'm at least impressed by the effort and thought Tom's put in to the provisions crammed into an extra-long cooler he breaks out. Inside I find-courtesy of what will undoubtedly be the first of many official Hoya Blue Safeway grocery store outings-the requisite generic supermarket Coca-Cola clones and burger patties. Tom's gone the extra mile and purchased a box of veggie burgers. Something tells me that if I do a follow-up story in March for lacrosse season, that same box will make a repeat appearance. I raise a point about a potential flaw in Hoya Blue's planning for today-I can't possibly imagine 24 people wanting ginger ale with their hot dogs.

Kurt cuts me off, practically mid-sentence, as if his internal alarm clock has just jolted him back into his role as Hoya Blue's head-cheerleader.

"I got to go get the flag."

"What flag?" I ask.

"The Big Flag."

Yes. The Big Flag. Anyone who's attended a basketball game at the MCI Center during the past season will recall The Big Flag, the PVC and Block-G gargantuan that leads the Hoya layup line onto the court prior to tipoff. It spent last night in Kurt's bedroom.

Fitting, then, that I'm about to be stuck with The Big Flag. Somewhere around the fifth joke I make at Kurt's expense as he wrestles with a giant sheet of fabric, he's called away by a non-specific sense of urgency near the grill. Now I'm on Flag Patrol.

I find out rather quickly that it isn't so much "The Big Flag" as it is "The Surprisingly Heavy, Awkward, and Impossible to Balance Flag". The flagpole itself is easily eight feet fall, with the heaviest weighted section at a joint roughly the height of my head. Its natural tendency, then, is to curve away from the direction you're facing, which in my case changes roughly every 10 seconds as I hang on for dear life. Matt Kamenski, one of Hoya Blue's staffers recognizable to most patrons of the student section for his Aviator glasses and curly-haired blue wig, tells his war story of running/battling with the Big Flag at a men's lacrosse game last spring. I'm officially scared to death of being killed by a piece of fabric and a long plastic pipe.

Thankfully, Tom comes to my rescue. Not by taking the flag-I don't think anybody's lining up for that job anymore. Nope, we decide to surrender the operation and stick it in a fence. Over near the grill, Kurt looks on worriedly.

Finally, about 20 minutes prior to kickoff, the grill gets its first customers. No, they haven't been lured by Hoya Blue's flyers, the smell of charcoal, even the "where the heck is all that noise coming from" curiosity that will occasionally lead a Henle resident astray during a weekday afternoon match. They're here because the Athletic Department's paying them to work the game.

Their appearance gives rise to an impromptu debate. Hoya Blue's rules for today's BBQ are that any student wearing the official "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirt will get all-you-can-eat privileges for free. All other students can eat for $2. But is it all-they-can-eat? And are sodas included? Or is it all-you-can-drink and a separate per-burger charge? Nobody seems to know. And the conversation tails off without any resolution. One thing's for sure-nobody's getting any food right now, unless they prefer their burgers dangerously south of rare.

"So should some of us go in?" Ray asks as the P.A. announcer reads the starting lineups.

One benefit women's soccer games at Georgetown have over men's basketball-no getting run over in the concourse by over-eager seat-seekers. When Ray, Kurt, and I walk through the gates of North Kehoe field as the opening whistle sounds-Kurt with the Big Flag in tow-we're the first members of the Hoya Blue staff to make to the stands.

I attended my share of games at North Kehoe during my Senior year at Georgetown, a result of my roommate having the women's soccer beat for "The Hoya". Women's soccer is far from an attendance juggernaut-the couple hundred people here this afternoon seem about average from what I recall. But there's a certain atmosphere at these games that, while it's not the MCI Center and it's not even loud most of the time, is still important enough to try and capture and develop.

The one group of students who do frequent women's soccer games are other varsity athletes. Rarely did a game go by on a weekday afternoon when the Field Hockey team wouldn't stop by at the end of their practice on "classic" Kehoe Field, or a trio of basketball players show up for a few minutes, or a stray lacrosse player or two take a break from taking shots at the tool shed next to the Kehoe bleachers.

More often than not, the majority of student attendees at women's soccer games seem to be there to support friends of theirs. And when you get down to it, isn't that the purest form of athletic supporting you can have? I never understood why, in the six years I've watched Hoya Blue run promotions, they never focused on the personal side of the student-athletes whose events they promote. After all, that goalkeeper? Is in your Problem of God class. That power forward? Lived on your floor freshman year.

North Kehoe Field is never going to resemble Old Trafford. But if it turned out to resemble the community park where I used to work soccer games in High School, with the parents screaming and the fellow players shouting encouragement, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Of course, Hoya Blue has higher ambitions. Before the game, I find myself talking soccer with Kurt and Stephen Medlock. To call each a fan of their respective favorite Eastern European football regions (Stephen's spent time in Russia, Kurt not surprisingly favors Poland) would be a vast understatement, along the lines of saying either of them "is a little into" Georgetown basketball. Stephen brings up the U.S. Men's National Team's World Cup Qualifier tonight against Mexico, causing Kurt to stop mid-thought again. Uh-oh, I think. The Big Flag must have fallen.

Turns out he's just remembered Poland's crucial World Cup Qualifier against Austria should kick off right around the time the Georgetown game ends. He resolves to make it back to his apartment to watch the Gamecast. When I get back to my own apartment, I'll discover 8 IM's from Kurt, recounting the back-and-forth of what turns out to be a 3-2 victory for his adopted homeland.

Stephen and Kurt are both fascinated by the fan culture of European soccer crowds, and are determined in some small way to bring a little piece of that atmosphere to North Kehoe Field. I learn that someone in Hoya Blue has come up with an idea to start an official group of GU soccer fans called the "Hoya Hooligans," whose mission includes creating "a home pitch advantage so daunting that no one wants to play at North Kehoe." It's admittedly a work in progress-when I ask around I never manage to establish whose idea this was, only that it was "thrown out there" sometime in the previous week. On the plus side, whoever wrote their profile on the Hoya Blue website knows their football lingo.

Another promising development in Hoya Blue's quest for a home pitch advantage takes a page from Georgetown's student fan history. Kurt in particular is determined to re-introduce the once-popular "Pots and Spoons" cheering section to Georgetown soccer games after five-plus seasons in purgatory thanks to the pitiful whining of opposing Big East coaches. If there's any group of students that can bring back the Viking-helmet-Dutch-Oven-Ice-Cream-Scooper-Cowbell spirit of one of Georgetown's truly legendary grass roots operation, I wouldn't be shocked if it's the Troll Wig and Kurt Shirt crowd.

We're not quite up to the "Pots and Spoons" standards as of yet. Matt's managed, with considerable wrangling, to acquire a single practice drum pad and drumstick from a friend in the Pep Band. For his part, Kurt brought a spoon and a cookie sheet. Why someone with a campus apartment has a cookie sheet and not a pot is a mystery to me. I bring it up, but Kurt shrugs it off. He gives a few attempts at banging out a "Let's Go Hoyas" chant on the cookie sheet, but he's got his hands full at the moment up here on the top row of the bleachers.

He's holding the Big Flag.

At about the fifteenth minute of the first half, we've got our first controversial foul going against the Hoyas, as luck would have it directly in front of the Hoya Blue section. And the Hoya Blue section goes…well, nuts is a little much. But the use of "Sir" in the anti-referee invective? Now that reminds me of the community park and my old refereeing job.

The crowd erupts in the 38th minute as Brittany Berry heads home a cross to give the Hoyas a 1-0 lead. Fifty or so Hooligans can be surprising loud. The recorded siren a GU soccer parent plays off of their megaphone adds the community park touch. I scan the crowd for signs of a cowbell.

With the exception of a 15 minute interval at halftime, Kurt holds the flag up for the entire game, leaning casually against the back railing of the bleachers. I have no doubt that this is not the last time Hoya Blue will come to a game where they alone form the majority of the attendees. But at least it's nice to know somebody like Kurt will be there holding up a big goofy flag for the cause.

The Hoya Hooligans have some work to do, to be sure. By the end of the first half, they've already repeated a few of the jokes in their "Canada" file (apparently FDU has a mini recruiting pipeline to the Great White North). And mastering the mechanics of the popular "Ole!" chant proves to be equally as challenging as transitioning to the second verse of the Fight Song was for those three freshmen on Wednesday night.

But it's a solid start. And a solid result-that first goal holds up for the rest of the game and the Hoyas earn a 1-0 victory. In another decent result, despite the comparatively small showing this afternoon, Hoya Blue sells around 10 shirts to the students who do make it up the hill.

The remaining Hoya Blue staffers get two sets of visitors as they mill about outside North Kehoe after the game. First are the officials, who exchange a few high-fives and fist-taps with their harshest critics. You get the sense that even the three gentlemen who received the balance of abuse from the crowd throughout the game are in some way happy to have at least had someone there to yell at them.

Then there's the GU women's soccer players, who file out of the field in small groups, soccer bags and cleats strung over their shoulders. Most of them are likely headed back to their dorms. On the way, however, a few stop by to thank the Hoya Blue volunteers…well, "Hoya Hooligans,"…well, really, their classmates for showing up at the game and supporting them.

Whether it's been soccer players, Orientation Advisors, or the guy with the Louisiana-Lafayette hat and Sun Belt Conference shirt who stopped by the table last Sunday and asked if, seriously, that was the real football stadium, Hoya Blue's been getting a lot of "thanks for showing up" comments this week. Sometimes the simplest thing is the most appreciated.

Tom, Steve Medlock, and Ray huddle around the GUGS grill. Hoya Blue's leadership faces its first impromptu creative challenge of the year: how do you cool off a bunch of charcoal so you can dump it and return the grill you borrowed? With a scout team of three intrepid volunteers sprinting across Kehoe Field in search of a water source (the answer to how Matt's small water bottle is going to handle a full grill of charcoal seems to have met the same fate as the prices of hot dogs and hamburgers for staff members), Hoya Blue makes it's first significant cooperation with a Georgetown athletics team. They put out the charcoal with the help…of the women's soccer team Gatorade bucket.

Friends supporting friends.

Epilogue

I pitch in ferrying Hoya Blue's provisions back to a waiting car borrowed from one of the volunteers. "Hoya Blue Soccer Weekend" has one day left, and a local rivalry clash with American University tomorrow figures to bring an impressive crowd from both schools and a more rowdy atmosphere.

My Hoya Blue weekend, however, is done. Tomorrow, I'll be back at work at the bookstore, where I'll wear my store's standard-issue "STAFF" t-shirt-which is bright yellow.

There are three things I take away from my three days with Hoya Blue:

The first is a nasty sunburn. I figure between the NSO tabling and today's BBQ, I've spent a grand total of 11 hours outside in Washington, D.C.'s late summer sun. The thing is, I'm not the only one. Kurt and Tom showed up before me at both of the outdoor events. Ray worked behind a grill for two hours today. The one thing I can say about Hoya Blue's core group of volunteers-they're completely dedicated to the mission of their club. Sometimes caring about building school spirit on campus means getting a sunburn. They'll do it.

They'll do a lot of things this year I figure. I'm not under any illusion that they'll do everything-if 50-75 people show up for a Field Hockey game in a little over a week like the Hoya Blue prospectus suggests they might, I'll eat my yellow shirts. But they'll be there, I can guarantee that. Even if there's two Hoya Blue guys sitting in the bleachers with their "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirts on, they'll be there. And if Kurt is one of them, maybe he'll bring the Big Flag.

They've already done some amazing things in a single week: as of the time I wrote this article, they'd sold 530 "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirts and 195 season tickets. Their email list has also now eclipsed the 500 mark.

The second thing I take away is the confidence that my first theme/prescription from my earlier column this summer:

"The people who are the most passionate about Georgetown athletics and care the most about building a strong student section are the best people to put in charge of promoting games to other students. There is no substitution for this."

Has been fulfilled. I personally wouldn't substitute a single other group of fans for the people I've watched at work over my past three days on the Hilltop.

What I'm intrigued about is to see what happens with the other theme I laid out in the article:

Every student-and, in fact, every alumnus-can and should still be a part of building a strong fan base at Georgetown. The student section is just a smaller part of the university as a whole; just like in university admissions, input and stories from alumni and current students are invaluable to "prospective" students.

One of the reasons "Kurt Shirts" caught on so well last basketball season was that they were supported, both financially and fashion-wise, by alumni and friends of the Georgetown program. And one of the reasons Hoya Blue events have been run so smoothly so far this year is because Tom has worked with and been supported by the Georgetown Athletic Department and the Student Activities Commission.

Hoya Blue is in a unique place at this moment in its history. Perhaps never before has it had the attention of so many different constituencies in the Georgetown community. I was continually impressed this week by the number of NSO volunteers who stopped by to thank Hoya Blue or to plug their events to new students. A few days after my visit to the soccer game, Hoya Blue receives another compliment, when Coach Thompson interrupts a meeting to personally thank Kurt for the club's efforts and buy a few shirts.

The next step is to get every student involved. During the three days I'm with Hoya Blue, Tom and Kurt frequently discuss the status of their ongoing application drive for new board members. They're looking to fill something close to a dozen slots, including at least three-the "Dorm Captains" of New South, Harbin, and Village C-that figure to be slotted for freshmen. Their hoping that at the very least, they'll come into contact with the kinds of die-hard student fans that will keep the club growing and keep it successful after they've left Georgetown.

The day after the soccer game I attend, Hoya Blue gets the best news of all: the club has far exceeded its expectations for sales of "I Bleeds Hoya Blue" shirts and season basketball tickets and has already turned a profit for the year.

The third thing I took from this weekend…was one of those "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirts.

If I could only wear it at the bookstore.