Sept. 24, 2007
By: Jarrett Newby
On September 24th the East Carolina University SAAC hosted a freshman athlete speed meet, with the goal of promoting a greater interaction and unity among ECU athletes. By accomplishing this goal we feel that greater support will be seen at non-revenue sporting events, as athletes that know each other will be far more likely to support each other. Finally, by hosting this event near the start of the year, we felt it was a great opportunity for the freshman athletes to become more familiar with us, so in the future they would not hesitate to use SAAC as a resource.
The event started out with a pizza party and time for the athletes to socialize freely. After the pizza, all of the freshmen were instructed to find a seat in the speed meet ring. This ring consisted of a stationary outer row of chairs and an inner row or chairs that rotated in a clockwise direction every minute. The one-minute rotations were a perfect amount of time, as they allowed new social connection to be made while still being short enough where we could maximize the number of athletes that everyone could meet. The event not only allowed for the freshman to become acquainted with their fellow Pirates, but also gave them an opportunity to become more familiar with all of the different SAAC representatives as we had several members of SAAC integrated into the speed meet ring.
For a first year event, the freshman speed meet ran very smoothly, and was more exciting than the freshman bowling party SAAC hosted in years past. One highly encouraging sign from the evening was the fact that the only two real problems that occurred were people getting excited and talking to loud, thus making it hard for neighboring groups to interact and the fact that people did not want to rotate because they were having such a good time with the current person. Another example of the speed meets success was the men's swim teams' new found support of the women's soccer team. They have now started showing up to their games in masses! Their support is contagious as their signs, painted chests and sometimes swimming attire really get the rest of the fans fired up.
The event for us was everything that we hoped it would be and we encourage other schools to try to host a similar event. We feel this event was so successful because of the positive interactions we observed at the speed meet, the increased support at athletics events, and the feedback we received at our recent SAAC meeting. We are definitely going to try and do this event again next year!
