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"It's Been A Summer" (Part 3)
Sports Entrepreneurs and the 365 Day Approach to Hoya Fandom

By John Hawkes

Mrs. Keszler has finally arrived and is going over a list of condiments with her son, me, and Hoya Blue's Personnel Officer Nick Sementelli. I've been to a number of Hoya Blue, SAC, even GUGS barbecues in my day, and I believe this is the first time anyone has thought of providing chopped onions as a garnish. After Pete's mother loads up a cooler of meat, cheese, and-for the first time in Hoya Blue history-produce, she shoves a matchbook into her son's pocket and sends us on our way back up the stairs to North Kehoe Field. As we lug provisions and a giant bag of Kingsford charcoal past the fence behind the East goal, Pete matter-of-factly says to me:

"Makes me nervous…I never know how many people are gonna show up."

Two things immediately come to my mind:

First of all, it occurs to me that Pete treats his promotional efforts like he's a Team Mom.

Second, it strikes me as odd that he'd be so concerned with attendance. Two days before, Pete and Hoya Blue had put on what by all accounts has to be the most successful soccer promotion in Georgetown history, with or without a functioning barbecue grill. According to two separate reports I received after the game-one of which I confirmed with a member of the Athletic Department staff-anywhere between 500 and 700 students showed up to watch the Hoyas defeat Syracuse 1-0 in overtime. More than once since that game, I've heard students ponder how many men's basketball games could have pulled in 700 students at the MCI Center just a few years ago.

Soccer has grown by leaps and bounds as a spectator sport at Georgetown over the past two years. One needs no further evidence than the re-emergence of noisemakers at games.

A little over a year ago, I covered a women's soccer game for an article about Hoya Blue's promotional efforts ["Three Days With Hoya Blue" (Part 3), 9/23/05] and I recorded the following:

"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. "

A little over a year later, with some wrangling and a little insider knowledge gained from his pre-season planning meeting with the soccer team, Peter Keszler managed to acquire a large percentage of the percussion section of the GU Pep Band to drum at the Syracuse game. To my knowledge, nobody in the crowd brought kitchenware.

Though the comparison with men's basketball crowds in Craig Esherick's final season is intriguing, a more apt analogy would be with last season's epic fan performance in the men's soccer game against Villanova. So dominating was the presence of the Hoya Hooligans during the 2-0 victory over the Wildcats that Villanova's head coach received a yellow card after cursing out the Georgetown student section. After the game, a Nova assistant coach challenged the Hooligans to jump over the railing and fight him…provided they did so one at a time.

Large crowds can be intimidating.

What was most significant about the Villanova game was not that the student section created at least one yellow card. Rather, it was that the game and the experience created a buzz that lasts to this day. In the run-up to soccer season, I heard several students who I suspect would otherwise have no interest whatsoever in following soccer talking about how awesome "the Nova game" was, and how eager they were to try and re-create it at North Kehoe field this year.

The cases where a "perfect storm" of Hoya fandom comes together are few and far between. "The Duke game" last January was unquestionably such a case-a nationally televised victory over an undefeated #1 opponent/Evil Empire played out before a Sea of Gray. There's little doubt in my mind that game revolutionized student fan support for the Georgetown men's basketball program, and filled those lines winding out of the Leavey Center and McDonough Arena during fall student season ticket sales.

"The Duke game" was the most significant home victory for the Hoyas in decades…and it may be decades until a similar situation presents itself.

"The Villanova game" by contrast was a man-made storm. Thanks to the work of several dozen fans and a committed promotional effort from Hoya Blue, a single game against a middle-of-the-road conference rival became the defining moment of a season, and kept people anticipating the beginning of men's soccer season from nearly the moment the previous campaign ended.

That's the power of a sports entrepreneur…of a committed student fan club. They can create a memorable experience that brings fans to the table and back again days, weeks, and months later. They can create a "talking point" that stays on fan's lips throughout the year.

There will be no yellow cards handed out to the St. John's coaching staff today, and no gauntlets laid down to the Hoya Hooligans. Sadly, there won't be 700 students packing the bleachers of North Kehoe Field on this Sunday afternoon either. This is hardly surprising to anyone, including Men's Soccer Coach Brian Wiese, who informs us Hoya Blue is up against a tough slate of opponents this afternoon:

Sunday, study, sleep, NFL.

At this point, Pete, Nick, and I are still the only three members of the student section who've arrived. When the opening whistle sounds, I count sixteen students in the Hoya Blue section, though the number will eventually balloon to about four times that number by halftime. We do carry one legacy of the Syracuse game with us: the first two rows of bleachers directly behind the visitor's bench have been roped off. After Friday's game, Coach Wiese informed us, the Syracuse coaching staff had complained to the Big East Conference about the behavior of the Hoya Hooligans, including their purported use of profanity.

What I see on this afternoon, however intimidating, could hardly warrant anything beyond a PG-13 rating…the most risqué language comes in the form of the "filthy northern bastards" chant after several hard SJU fouls (I'm told this is a holdover from the Cuse game and, given our geographic location within the Big East conference, it figures to get more use later in the season). For 90 minutes, virtually all of them played with GU trailing, the Hoya Hooligans do not shut up, wave after wave of cheers, chants, and songs echoing off the GU Conference Center and the GU Hospital. The appreciative applause of the Georgetown players after today's 5-2 loss says volumes about the impact the student fans are already having on the team this season. Later in the week, Pete will proudly point out to me this quote in The Hoya's recap of the Syracuse game from goalkeeper Joe Devine (who started in place of his brother):

"We've been on the losing end of some games when we've been away...Now that we were home and had all these fans out, it was great. I think they helped us pull out the win."

Thus far, the Hoya Hooligans project has surpassed Pete's admittedly modest expectations. Even still, he says he hasn't done as much as he's wanted to with his promotions this season and feels that even the Syracuse and St. John 's barbecues could have been better advertised. He also hasn't lost track of the larger significance of his efforts so far:

"The point is," he concludes, "these games are selling themselves. We haven't really needed to have an event to go along with the game to get people. They're selling themselves on word of mouth mostly. People are having a good time and come back."

Hoya Blue has already expressed interest in finding willing entrepreneurs like Pete to take the reins of other "minor" sports efforts, including women's basketball, women's soccer, women's volleyball, and men's and women's lacrosse. This is part of a commitment made by the club's reformed leadership at the beginning of last year to hold at least one event for every varsity sport that competes on campus at Georgetown-an effort that last year meant the club's calendar ran from Labor Day weekend through Spring semester exams in mid-May.

"It's really important to not just support our main sport but all the other student athletes who compete for Georgetown University," Pete says, "There's definitely a market for these other sports and as the official sports and spirit club we have to cater to these other interests."

To be continued...