Halpern and Greenfield hosted the women’s basketball team for a meal over winter break. (Cecilia O’Grady | Staff Writer)

Claire Halpern and Michael Greenfield might be WashU basketball’s biggest fans.  

On game days, the married couple is decked out in reds and greens. When the Bears are in the playoffs, they wear a special pair of socks for the postseason. They go to every basketball game, even attending the away games if they’re within driving distance. 

Halpern and Greenfield seem like the common super-fan archetype. They’re the kind of die-hard fans you may spot at a Cardinals game or maybe at a Big Ten basketball matchup, but at a Division III school like WashU, they are quite the oddity. 

Greenfield taught at WashU School of Law for 53 years before retiring in 2023, but he did not start attending basketball games until 2005. A casual follower of WashU sports before, he first convinced Halpern to attend a game with a small incentive.

“He bribed me,” Halpern said. “He said to me … ‘If you’ll go with me to a basketball game tomorrow night, I’ll buy you a hot dog.’” 

Since that game, the two have become lifelong fans, sticking by the team for its highest and lowest moments. 

Halpern and Greenfield are WashU basketball’s biggest fans, consistently attending games since before the current first-years on the teams were born. Their enthusiasm for the program extends to both the men’s and women’s teams. 

“It’s like asking which child is your favorite,” Halpern said. “The women … to me, it’s more artistic. The men’s [is] more physical.” 

Wins and losses aside, their relationship extends beyond fandom, with the two regularly hosting the teams for dinner. Since the basketball teams typically play over WashU’s winter break, when dining halls are closed, players often have to rely on team-issued sandwich coupons to eat. In 2010, Halpern and Greenfield started hosting the basketball teams for dinner over break.  

“We learned that over winter break, there’s no food service, which just shocked me,” Halpern said. “So we started hosting the team just so you guys could have one normal meal over break.” 

When asked about memorable games, two in particular came to mind. 

The first one they described was a women’s game against the University of Chicago. 

“We were down 9 points with 47 seconds left, and we won,” Halpern said. “We intentionally fouled the same woman; she kept missing … We gave the ball to Erica Hunt, who made back-to-back threes. Wow.”

The second was the first round of the men’s playoffs hosted by WashU in 2018. 

“We had an outstanding team, and we got beat on a buzzer beater by Aurora [University],” Greenfield said about the game. 

While they love seeing the team in person, away games haven’t been as enjoyable when watched online. With the University Athletic Association’s shift to FloSports, a subscription-required streaming service for games, accessing the games has been very difficult. Together, the couple says the platform makes it harder to feel connected to the games they’ve followed for decades.

“The broadcast is not so good … there are pauses, and it’s out of sync with the video and the audio,” Greenfield said. 

“Also, I don’t like the price,” Halpern said. “If an alum wants to just turn in for a particular game, there doesn’t seem to be a one-game access option.”

But for Greenfield and Halpern, the heart of being a fan has never been about the broadcast: It’s the small, heartfelt gestures between the team and fans that make every game worth attending. 

“I will tell you, [at] the end of [the] game … [the women’s basketball team] turning around and sort of applauding [the fans] is lovely,” Halpern said. 

The couple continues to follow the teams closely this season, postseason pair of socks in hand, ready for what the Bears may accomplish.

Editor’s note: Cecilia O’Grady is a member of the women’s basketball team and a staff writer for Student Life.