When you walk through North Carolina’s main campus in Chapel Hill, or down the drag in the University of Texas’s home city of Austin, you will notice a sense of conformity in collegiate apparel. One would be hard pressed to find anything other than Tar Heel blue or burnt orange in their travels to those two cities. At Wash. U. things are a bit different. Of course everyone cheers for the Bears and gets excited when one of the teams makes a run at yet another D-III title, but at Wash. U., we don’t have to let go of our roots. In other words, we don’t have to abandon our previous college loyalties. And, believe me, there is something to be said for that.
Going to camp in Blacksburg, Va. I grew up a die hard Virginia Tech fan. I lived through the Michael Vick era, as well as the Jim Druckenmiller era as passionately as anyone in southwest Virginia did. Making my college choice as an avid sports fan was difficult. How could I ever give up the opportunity to be a part of big time college sports? Simple. I would never give up my roots. No matter where I decided to go-Michigan, Notre Dame, even Miami or UVA-my Hokie fanaticism would never have wavered.
Every Saturday in Ann Arbor, every student files into the big house or around their TVs to cheer for the maze and blue. Even if a person hails from East Lansing (home of rival Michigan State), everyone will be cheering for the Big Blue. That’s great, but you lose the competitiveness of rooting against your friends. There is no better feeling than sitting with your best friend, watching your team annihilate his team, and then throwing in it his face. You lose that at a big time sports school, as everyone morphs into the same fan. Not here, though. Here we stick to our roots.
Every Saturday in Clayton, a number of different games can be seen. When Michigan and Notre Dame face off, people wearing different jerseys sit on the same couch cheering against each other. At Wash. U., a school without major college sports, it’s very easy to keep your loyalties while also cheering for the Bears. At other schools it’s not an option. You shed your ties, or become ostracized. And shedding your ties is much more difficult for some than others.
“I can’t imagine rooting against UF ever, ” said junior Scott Stern of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. told me. “If I went to somewhere like Miami and they played UF, I never would have been able to root against the Gators, no matter how much everyone hated me for it.”
Neither could I. No matter where I went in the country, if they played Virginia Tech I would be sporting my two sizes too small, four-year old number seven Virginia Tech jersey. A Division III school gives you a unique opportunity to root for your own school, but maintain your D-I roots. At least that’s what I tell myself.