DAL vs. UPEI, AUS finals. By Andrew Meade
Oh, Dal, youâve finally done it. The Tigers soccer teams have finally won an AUS banner. Iâve covered the teams for four years and have never seen them win one.
Sure, it was over webcast, and yeah, Iâm a heartless journalist who shouldnât cheer for any team, but it was still fun. Itâs fun to watch the AUS trophy hoisted every year, but itâs a little better when itâs oneâs home school.
Iâm not a sports-centric glory-hunter. The high school newspaper I ran ignored the sports teams almost completely. I never attended or played high school sports. I have never played organized soccer. And yet I was still glued to my 240-pixel viewer window on Saturday.
Maybe thereâs a lesson we can take from this in the ongoing mystery that is Dal Athletics attendance figures. To be clear: people do come to Dal soccer games, theyâre just never into it, and not all of them are journalism students, surely?
There is an element of escapism to watching university soccer, or any sport, really. There is a fantastic quality to it, part of the possibility in amateur sport, captured in people showing what they love and what theyâve learned.
If youâre sitting in one of the stuffier Dal faculty offices or creakier study desks in the Killam and wondering what this has to do with anything, consider: a university is an old institution. The idea of a college of like-minded individuals is what we all hold dear. To watch, learn, grow and demonstrate within one community is why weâre here.
There is, sadly, no high-table at Dal. There is no way to publicly fete the greater achievements. So itâs back to the stacks and back to the marking: this is, after all, a âdegree factoryâ, isnât it?
But I hate that slang. The idea that my education is just about grades and marks and a piece of paper that will let me get a job is misguided. When Iâm watching a game at Wickwire, it reminds me that this is a college in a small military town. Itâs like reading a book written of plastic green pages. The effort, often against rain and bitter wind, and all for no grade whatsoever, makes it matter. The win just ends the story.
Watching our sports teams is important for the same reason itâs important to go to student theatre or readings, or why you should pop into the Grawood from time to time. The very top of the ivory tower is held up by what people have learnedâtake that away and the whole thing is just an idea. This weekend, a group of students showed what theyâve learned, and itâs time the college took a little notice.
Itâs called communityâcollegialityâand in a world the size of ours, we should take a little pride in this little town and its team that can and did.
