Alright, so in my last post, I told you how I am the proud owner of a “Swat Sucks” t-shirt. These t-shirts are sold every year before the annual Haverford-Swarthmore basketball game, and every year our basketball team manages to come up with a design that details just how much and exactly why Swat sucks. Despite our teams being mere minnows in Division 3 – Haverford is currently midtable and Swat places last in the Division 3 Centennial Conference, the game is an important one, although mainly for pride than anything else.
Exchange students agree that Swat sucks.
I am not a massive basketball fan. My bro plays it, and he’s very good, so I’ve seen a fair few games and am conversant with the rules, but American college sports are in a different league altogether. The rivalries here are intense, even between such small colleges as Haverford and Swat, and the Haverford stands were packed full of students in red shirts, waving noise makers emblazoned with “Swat Sucks” and “Go Fords” (our basketball team is called, incredibly originally, the Fords). Some Swat students swear that the rivalry is all in Haverford’s mind, but with a pretty healthy showing from their end, considering they’d had to coordinate cars and the shuttle bus, there is obviously some feeling on their part, too (plus, their chants were downright dirty).
As the stands shook with the stomping of Haverford feet, the game got underway and the atmosphere was friendly, the vast majority of chants being positive ones about the Fords, rather than negative ones about Swat. The issue of negative chanting is apparently controversial, a strange idea to an English girl reared on a diet of football matches where swearwords were as often being bellowed by the six year-old girl next to you as the lardy man two rows down. But some of my friends here explained that many high schools only allow positive chanting, and so to them chanting “Swat Sucks” goes against everything that they have been taught. I, however, had no qualms, and cheered and jeered loudly with the rest.
Although the teams were fairly equally matched, Swat never managed to gain the lead over Haverford, despite coming close quite a few times. Some of the loudest support during these tense times came from the Haverford alums in the stands, often there with their families. There is a real sense of a Haverford community, and I have mentioned this previously, that persists even after graduation. It may be because the college is so small and everyone at least recognises each other, but when there are large numbers of alums of all ages cheering on their college, families in tow, there seems to exist a real and special connection between the college and its students.
This week coming up is going to be amazingly busy, especially since our sound installation is finally being presented on Monday (to a surprising amount of fanfare) and I have two essays due as well. Hopefully, I’ll remember to blog before I leave for Shanghai.
