Several hundred Towson football fans traveled to Delaware Saturday aboard buses in an unprecedented show of school spirit.
The Student Government Association sold 266 tickets to the game, enough to fill seven buses.
James Coletta, the SGA’s director of athletics, said people have told him Towson had never sent more than two buses of fans to an away game before.
“It just sets a tone for the whole year, and I just think we’re going to build off of it,” the junior marketing and e-commerce major said.
Tickets for the game originally cost $18, but SGA and University Residence Government contributed $4 each to lower the price to $10, and included the buses for free. The tickets sold out several days ahead of the game.
Some students later decided to drive to the game separately, so four buses ended up transporting students to Delaware.
Many of the fans were freshmen attending their first Towson athletic event. Paige Basil, a freshman mass communication major, enjoyed not having to arrange her own transportation to the game.
“It was like a high school field trip,” she said. “It was a really good game, and I think everyone was expecting us to lose a lot worse than we did.”
T-Unit founder Ory Streeter said the trip was “rocking.”
“I’ve never seen so much school spirit,” the junior animal behavior major said.
Students made the hour-long trek to Wilmington to see the debut of what could become a premier Atlantic 10 conference rivalry.
Dressed in black and gold, Tiger fans patrolled the Delaware campus making their presence known to local Blue Hen followers.
Towson students walked past throngs of heckling Blue Hen fans and responded to boos with chants of their own.
Standing among the group of painted faces, yellow and black thunderstix, and Towson football T-shirts, Tiger fans of all ages filed in prior to, and during, the game. “Fight on Towson Tigers, Fight on Black and Gold” filled the stands from time to time.
Coletta said he was optimistic about harnessing the energy from the first game later this fall.
“I think our whole campus is ripe for this,” Coletta said. “They want to see athletics grow like this.”
Specifically, another bus trip may be organized later this semester.
“We’re thinking about forming a bus trip to go up to Villanova in October,” Streeter said. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t happen again.”
Darnay Tripp contributed to this report.
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