The Ak attack: Where’s the pride?

When I envisioned college, I saw dorm buildings, big parties, loads of work to do, and doing much less of it than I should along with late night trips to Dunkin’ Donuts. Fairfield has certainly met all of those expectations, yet Fairfield has lacked on its involvement of the students with our athletic programs. Being involved with the sports section of The Mirror, I have seen the great athletic programs here at Fairfield. Beyond our basketball team, we have outstanding programs in lacrosse, volleyball and soccer. Both men’s and women’s teams here are all generally successful programs. Arguably the biggest factor in creating campus pride and unity is sports. The lack of participation is two-fold. Students should know what goes on with their campus through the daily campus announcements, flyers, or information here in The Mirror. At the same time, the altheltics department needs to be more involved in promoting attendance. Little is done to encourage the students to attend games. This is where the administration needs to come in. The biggest sport here is basketball, yet students have to get on a bus and pay to see their team play. For more than $40,000 a year, can administration utilize some of the budget and make the games free? With an increasing yearly tuition and growing enrollment, there seem to be additional dollars floating around. Despite the cost, there need to be more student activities at the games for students only and free of charge. The administration could host a tailgating party before the lacrosse games or have a true Fairfield cheering section at the basketball games with drinks and snacks. Why not a soccer after-party in Barone? It seems that here at Fairfield, if you want to have fun, you have to find it and pay for it. That is not the essence of college athletics. The biggest disappointment in my Fairfield experience is when the hockey and football teams were cut for budget reasons. Regardless, the school has kept a successful club hockey team that has drawn the support of the student body. Regardless of whether or not the university provides travel for the fans, each game often draws a capacity crowd of 2,200 fans! Perhaps this is something Fr. Jeffrey von Arx should consider reviewing. One of the best sports events in recent years at Fairfield came from one of the lesser known teams: the men’s lacrosse team. There were almost 2,000 fans to witness their miracle run last year into the NCAA tournament by defeating Denver here at Fairfield. All 2,000 of those fans hit that field when we were victorious. That is Stag-pride and that is what we need to encourage for our alumni, families and students.