The newest initiative to encourage school spirit and participation among athletes is already making changes for teams and their fans at DePauw.
The Tiger Cup, a new initiative from the Student Athlete Advisor Committee, is a competitive program that aims to increase support for DePauw sports teams at home. Each athletic team chooses two of its home games to be "tiger" games. The more tiger games athletes attend, the more points they receive for their respective teams.
The points work by percentage, so if half the members of a team show up to one of another team's tiger game, they can earn up to 50 points for 50 percent of the team's participation. At the end of the semester, the team that accumulates the highest number of points will win cash and prizes. The bleachers can be expected to be a lot fuller than in previous years, as is the administration's and the competition's goal.
The Tiger Cup officially kicked off September 5 at the home field hockey game.
"It's part of a wider DePauw initiative to promote school spirit," said senior Andrew Kahn, SAAC president and a men's tennis player.
Kahn said the initial idea for the competition came last spring during a meeting as members discussed how to raise attendance at athletic events. He said the more the group researched the project, the more they realized that programs like Tiger Cup, inner-athletic competitions, are common across college campuses and are generally successful.
The incentive behind getting students to go to other teams' games might make one think that athletes would only attend for the points. This is not the case though for freshman men's soccer player Alieu Musa.
"At first, I wanted to go to get points, but then you see them come out and support you, and cheer you on, so you want to do the same for them," Musa said. "I even go to games that are not Tiger Cup games."
Kahn said the program has been "fairly successful," but that SAAC is still trying to raise awareness within the athletic teams. He also said he believes that students will in turn support it as attendance climbs.