Fan bus a huge success
This weekend, 108 loyal fans watched the men’s basketball team win a national championship.
“The students who went seemed to have a great time and were part of something historic,” said Dean of Students Justin Carroll, who helped plan the event. “The team played extremely well, but if you ask them, the team will say that they were motivated by fan support.”
Despite a breakdown and traffic in West Virginia, the buses made the ideally 11-hour trek to Salem with plenty of time to spare. Fans bombarded the Salem Civic Center clad in red. Though the Washington University contingent was smaller than Hope College’s in the semifinal match, the Red and Green decibel level was far more dominating.
“[The fans] really set the tone and made the gym loud for us,” said basketball player Moss Schermerhorn, a senior. “That’s just what gets us going more than anything else. It really gets a great atmosphere for us so we love it.”
Trevor MacDonald of the Athletic Department and Carroll were in charge of much of the initial planning for the bus project. They had talked about having a fan bus before sectional games and spent much of the early part of last week planning logistics. “We started with one bus and 20 rooms and expanded to three buses and over 50 rooms,” said MacDonald.
Earlier this year, MacDonald planned a fan bus to the volleyball national championship. Unfortunately, there was not enough interest and plans fell through. This was not the case with basketball.
“Basketball had great support and we heard others wanted to go,” said MacDonald. “We were going to go through with one bus no matter what.”
Mary Elliot, the residential college director for Liggett-Koenig Residential College, took over planning the trip after MacDonald and Carroll left for Virginia on Wednesday and served as the head chaperone for the trip.
“Justin Carroll said that we had a bus after last Saturday’s game and a bunch of them said let us know if you need chaperones,” said Elliot.
The school paid for the buses, hotel rooms and game tickets, providing students with a unique opportunity.
“I was really glad the school got that together for us,” said freshman Ryan Henderson, who decided to travel to Virginia after attending most of the home basketball games this year.
Though the fan bus was overall a success, one student, according to Athletic Director John Schael, was arrested Saturday for excessive use of alcohol. The student was able to return to St. Louis with the rest of the group.
Overall, students enjoyed the experience.
“It was more like a 14-hour bus ride,” said sophomore Will Javellana, a member of the Phi Delta Theta Bomb Squad. “It was brutal but it was worth it.”
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