Azzara: Sports camaraderie fuels first-year experience

As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I applied to, got accepted to and chose to attend Pitt… As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I applied to, got accepted to and chose to attend Pitt without knowing anything about college sports.

I grew up in a decidedly baseball-loving household, having only brief stints on softball, lacrosse and track teams in elementary, middle and high school, respectively. I guess I never quite realized the excitement and fascination that surrounds college sports— particularly football and basketball.

Perhaps my lack of interest in college sports stemmed from my lack of interest in high school sports. As a teenager who spent her weekends watching live bands play in Philadelphia, the whole “Friday Night Lights” thing wasn’t exactly my scene. Sure, I’d attended a homecoming game or two, but those events were less about a sense of team spirit and community than a chance for different social groups to huddle together and watch the game, rarely interacting with others. Rather than uniting classmates, as I assumed that such a shared experience should, these games further strengthened the divide between different high school cliques.

So it was with this mindset that I began my freshman year at Pitt, completely unprepared to attend a university that prides itself on its sports teams. When I heard my fellow freshmen and classmates murmuring about their excitement for football season, I suddenly felt like a slightly less-clueless version of Ralphie from A Christmas Story: “Football? What’s a football?”

But despite my previous conceptions about school sports, it didn’t take me long to join in the yelling, screaming, jumping, face-painting, chanting, sign-making and cheering that go along with being a sports fan. I had succumbed to peer pressure and decided to go ahead and buy those football tickets, and I went to the first home football game of the season.

It was a novel experience finding thousands of my schoolmates decked out in Pitt gear, their unifying sense of excitement completely contagious. I, who had previously balked at the very idea of attending a sports game, suddenly found myself cheering along with the crowd, my happiness and sense of well being depending on the outcome of the game. A Pitt win meant celebration and joy, a loss, an unthinkable sorrow.

These feelings only amplified when basketball season began. The rules were easier to follow, the games more fast-paced, the players more visible. I fell in love with the energy in the arena the very first time I attended a game. I soon became a hardcore follower of the Pitt basketball team, even more so than I had been with football. It’s hard to explain the level of my unadulterated delight upon spotting former center Dejuan Blair walking down the street, or the depth of my despair when I was not awarded a ticket to the Pitt-Syracuse game. Suffice it to say, I had become infatuated with Pitt sports.

So what caused this strange transformation from apathy to obsession? Part of it involved the immediate sense of camaraderie and unity that I felt with my peers at the start of games. Starting school seemed a lot easier once I realized that I was a part of a community that so many people were passionate about.

There’s no denying the fact that it’s hard to pack up your life and move away to live on your own for the first time, but being a Panther fan gave me exactly the sense of belonging that I needed. This is a feeling for which all people long, and I was lucky to obtain it by becoming a proud fan of Pitt athletics.

For some of us Panther fans, it’s less about the game itself than the experience and the exhilaration that comes from being a part of something special. If my interest and knowledge about Pitt sports seems superficial, it’s because the sports themselves are not the most important thing to me. The fun, enthusiasm, pride and sense of community that manifests itself with chants of “P-I-T-T” are what it’s really all about.

E-mail Katie at kna6@pitt.edu.