>Posted on 13 Mar 1996 at 00:40:18 by Carl Sussman
>
>Re: 'Loyal' fans
>
>As a 4 year Brown Hockey fan, I too, must take issue with Professor Valente's
>remarks about us.  During my first two years (which included an NCAA appearance
>and two ECAC final fours) the Meehan was often packed with noisy fans.  In fact
>as Andrew Breecher pointed out, the "Zoo Zone" in particular was so boisterous,
> that we had many confrontations with the AD's Minister of Security, Jeff Ward.
 
It seems that taking exception to what I say is becoming a habitual
occurrence in Hockey-L circles. :-)
 
There is no question that the old Zoo Zone is missed (as I pointed out
to former Zoo Zone member Andy Shelden'94 in Burlington two weeks ago). I
was talking, however, about more than that great group of spirited,
boisterous Brown fans and other diehards like Carl Sussman and Andrew
Brecher, who will support the Brown hockey team no matter what.
 
>I can recall, for example, that during the 1994 ECAC qtrs with Vermont, we
>practically blew the roof off the place (despite having the best student seats
>given away to the visitors as punishment for raucous student behavior!)  A few
>Brown players even generously commented that they believed they would have lost
>that series if not for the Meehan crowd.
 
I'm not so sure... Meehan was indeed packed, but there were a lot of
Vermont fans. On Sunday night the rink was half empty, although Brown and
Vermont played an exciting, fast-paced third game. Very few Brown students
made the trip to Lake Placid the following weekend.
 
>Last season things got a bit worse, but only after the team took some pretty
>high profile beatings which turned off fans.
 
Last season Brown was in first place in the ECAC for most of the season.
Even after winning its first five games, and six of the first seven,
Brown drew a pitiful crowd for a game against the Canadian National
Team (which Brown lost by a very close margin). Brown had one bad weekend,
when it tied Yale and lost to Princeton at home in early February, but
followed that with convincing home wins over Vermont and Dartmouth.
 
Brown was still in first place at the beginning of the last weekend of
the 1994-95 season, and could have clinched the regular season title
(and an automatic NC$$ bid) by beating Clarkson, yet Meehan didn't
sell out for what was one of the most important games in Brown hockey
history. I remember that many of us tried to drum up support for the team
before that final weekend. The Carkson game was designated as "Banner Night,"
and former BDH hockey writer Martin Small'97 put up some of his
own money to pay for a pizza party for the group designing the best
banner. Unfortunately, Martin had trouble picking up the winner, not
because there were a lot of interesting banners, but because there were
hardly any.
 
The decision to play seventeen away games this season (and only twelve home
games) was made in part because of lack of support at home games last year.
Last season Brown seemed to play better away from Meehan, especially at
places with strong fan support, such as Vermont's Gutterson Field House
and Cornell's Lynah Rink.
 
And yet, as I've pointed out to Andrew Brecher earlier this week, it
wasn't that long ago that Meehan used to sell out for most games.
As a student at Brown, I remember getting to Meehan at 4:00 pm
for a 7:30 pm game in order to get good seats. By 6:00 pm the student
section was generally completely filled.
 
>I'll bet if you'd asked a couple of years ago, Professor Valente, or at any
>rate many others, would've said that RPI fans were among the most loyal in the
>ECAC.  This year, the team was bad, and so were the crowds.  That's just the
>way it goes.
 
Yes, I'm surprised by what is going on at RPI. But last season Brown
students weren't terribly supportive of a FIRST-PLACE team.
 
>I'm not saying that Brown fans are the greatest...a sense of rah-rah "school
>spirit" maybe one of the things you sacrifice in a community as socially and
>culturally diverse as ours.  Most of us (even those diehard Hockey fans like
>me, who haven'tmissed a home game in 4 years) think it's worth it.
 
I agree with you entirely. Providence is definitely not Ithaca, or Potsdam,
or Troy. This is a  city with 6 colleges/universities and a diverse cultural
life, which is one of the main reasons why many of us enjoy living here.
But I still wish Meehan would sell out, and that more students would attend
away games.
 
>Carl Sussman
>Brown U. 1996
>"I may choose my law school because it's ECAC."
 
Thank God Princeton doesn't have a law school.
 
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