On paper, the Tufts women's soccer team's match against Wesleyan looks just like any other the team will play this year: nothing more than an early-season game against a familiar middle-of-the-pack NESCAC foe.
But take a peek at Kraft Field tomorrow, and you'll quickly realize that the spectacle in front of you is anything but typical. From the school president handing out T-shirts at the door to the huge crowd to the 8-year-old girl sitting on the sidelines, the game has quickly become much more than a simple sporting event.
Half sporting event, half carnival
As the inaugural event of the Fan the Fire initiative, the game has the weight of the school's administration thrown behind it. Just for showing up, students will receive free food and T-shirts, some of which University President Anthony Monaco will be handing out. One lucky fan will walk away with far more, too, as the winner of the halftime penalty kick shootout. The prize for the contest was recently announced to be a pair of 50-yard line tickets to the New England Patriots game against the Miami Dolphins on Dec. 24. The event is being funded by the University Advancement Division, which focuses on alumni relations.
"It's really a win-win for everyone involved," Melissa Burke (LA '11), the co-creator of the idea, said. "The fans get free food, the team gets extra support and a great cause gets extra attention."
Beside all the giveaways, fans can stop by the tent of Team IMPACT, which matches children facing adversity with collegiate athletics teams. Not to mention that in the middle all of this, there is still a soccer game going on — a prospect that the team's members are quite excited about.
"I think it will great for our team," senior defender Cleo Hirsch said. "At Homecoming, it's such a big difference when people come out to the game and get really excited. The energy is always so much higher with a lot of fans."
From thesis to reality
This great idea all started with a senior project.
Burke and Amanda Roberts (LA '11), both former members of the Tufts field hockey team, had no visions of grandeur when they began a project for their Communications and Media Studies minors. The two threw around ideas for a while, and they eventually settled on developing a plan to better advertise Tufts Athletics.
"It was clear that a lot of Tufts doesn't care when it comes to athletics, so we were looking for a way to better market it," Burke said. "We talked with the head of Communications about it, and she thought it was a great idea."
Before long, the idea had grown wings and taken off. Burke and Roberts were given the opportunity to present to the Board of Athletics Overseers, and their proposal was met with widespread approval and excitement.
After graduation, Burke was offered a part-time job in Advancement under the direction of Christine Sanni. Though Roberts could not stay on campus due to a job she already had lined up, she has been in constant contact with Burke about the plan.
"Melissa and Amanda were really the creators of the concept and the idea behind it," Sanni said. "Their continued work on what was originally their senior project got this to where it is. It likely would never have made it here without them."
In a matter of just a few months, the plan had gone from being an idea in the head of a pair of seniors to a major initiative of Tufts Athletics.
Spirit, Sports, Service
The project was refined during Burke's time in Advancement. It was there that the final piece of the puzzle was added: active citizenship.
"[Mike Sherman], my art director, said we should really try to find the connective tissue between athletes and non-athletes," Sanni said. "And that tissue is active citizenship. Tufts students are brought into Tufts with the expectation that they will be active citizens, so we wanted to find a way to leverage that to get non-athletes to support athletes. When you show up for a game, you aren't just supporting the soccer team; you are also supporting the greater good."
Once that was in place, the name — Fan the Fire: Spirit, Sports, Service — soon followed. In many ways, it is the project's connection to citizenship that separates it from past initiatives to garner support for the athletics department. While some students may struggle to connect to a sporting event, service is very much a part of the Tufts maxim throughout the school's colleges and departments. Many of the athletic teams were already involved in volunteer work of some kind or another, so the idea was a natural fit for them as well.
"Our feeling was that if we wanted to generate more attention to sports at Tufts, it needed to be about more than just sports," Tufts Director of Athletics Bill Gehling said. "We wanted to use sports to unite the Tufts community, so this idea of active citizenship, which is a core concept of this university, played well into that."
Making an IMPACT
When it came to choosing a team and organization to build the program's first event around, Team IMPACT and its relationship with the women's soccer team seemed to be a perfect fit. Team IMPACT, the brainchild of a group of largely Tufts alumni, follows a similar model to the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation, which matched Adrian Misic — a young boy with a brain tumor — with the baseball team in 2009.
"The concept behind Team IMPACT is that when there are children facing life-threatening or serious conditions, we are trying to help them out with a built in support network," Dan Kraft, who serves on the board of Team IMPACT as well as Tufts' Board of Athletics Overseers, explained. "At hospitals you see kids going in and initially they have a lot of guests, but as the treatment lengthens the only people left are the parents and siblings. Team IMPACT gives them an enhanced family."
Over the summer, Team IMPACT paired the women's soccer team with Joli Vega, who lost an eye to retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer that she was diagnosed with at the age of two. The team first met Joli during summer games and had adopted her in a small ceremony before the school year began. She has quickly become a part of the team, sharing birthdays, eating in the dining hall and sitting on the bench during pre-game. In fact, she even has her own number.
"She has really become a part of the team," senior Laney Siegner said. "For an 8-year-old, she's not shy at all. She's always right in the middle of the action. She came to our practice a couple of weeks ago with her mom and we all made friendship bracelets together."
But while the program may seem on its surface to be all about helping out a child in need, Hirsch feels that in many ways Joli's effect on the team may be larger than the team's effect on Joli.
"We are probably getting more out of it than she is," Hirsch said. "She's so cute and funny and I feel like I have a new little sister and best friend. It's not every day that you get to meet someone from a different age group than yourself that you get close to and it's really exciting and fun."
Kraft says this type of reaction is not atypical.
"One of the things I really love about the organization is that the athletic teams get a lot out of it as well," Kraft said. "I think it grounds them and they see that people are suffering in the world and they can make a real difference."
For any fans that are interested in learning more about Team IMPACT or Joli's story, the organization will have a tent set up at the game. And of course, Joli will be on the sideline cheering on her team.
The start of something big
The athletics department hopes that this can be the first in a series of events throughout the year and across all of the university's sports. But that is all contingent on the success of the premier event.
"This is the starting point," Burke said. "How successful this first game is will determine how many more events like this we can do and how much funding we will get. So we really need everyone to come out."
The gates open at 11 a.m. with the women's game kicking off at noon. The men's game, also against Wesleyan, will start at 2:30 p.m. There are undoubtedly high expectations for the event.
"I'll be surprised if we don't have a big supporting crowd on Saturday," Gehling said. "I will be disappointed, but more than anything I will be surprised. It's going to draw a lot of people, but it is another challenge to keep drawing a lot of people. I hope that people get there and see how much fun it can be."
