SAAC has created t-shirts for their new fan section, “The Piper Pit,” to support Hamline’s athletic teams.

“In high school, the thing to do on a Friday night was go to a football game…you go to the game with all your friends, have a blast and cheer on your team. We want to get that mentality back at Hamline,” senior Andrea Haus, president of SAAC, said.

SAAC (Student Athlete Advisory Committee) works to keep student athletes engaged on campus with other student athletes, students on campus and alumni. The committee is comprised of a group of nearly 50 members, as each sport team at Hamline has at least two athletes serving as a SAAC representative. They are led by two presidents, senior Ryan Ferkinhoff and Haus.

“The past few years SAAC has tried to push attendance from other sports teams to support within the athletic department and then we wanted to reach out to the regular student body,” Haus said.

Senior SAAC representative McDaniel Doe elaborated.

“We try to bridge that gap between athletes and non-athletes,” Doe said.

Last year, SAAC created the “code red” events, which is where SAAC organizes special activities including half-time shows, free food and other special activities to attract more students to attend games. Each team is given a single game to choose as their most important to select as their code red game. This year the football team chose their night football game against Macalester this Sat.

Doe said SAAC was impressed with the turnout at those events during the fall, but during the spring semester they noticed the attendance dropped. Last May, they decided to introduce a new fan section to boost attendance and from there they created “The Piper Pit.”

“It’s just something we’re doing to bring more people to the game and I think that’s something we need more of,” Doe said. “It’s a fan section, anyone can join.”

SAAC representative senior Jessica Putland explained the football team and PAA (Piper Athletic Association), an organization that works to bring PR to Hamline through its athletics program, thought the Piper Pit would be beneficial.

“You can see, especially in D-I schools, the better your football program is the better support [the school gets] monetarily,” Putland said.

In a building year for the football team, the idea is the extra support could give them a boost to improve their record.

“I don’t think fans realize the impact that they have on the game,” Putland said. “When you feel your fans are really supportive it helps with your motivation and it can really help you to go that extra yard.”

The Piper Pit will be a fan section for every sport. The shirts are $5 and along with the shirts come a set of guidelines.

“They’re not guidelines per say, they’re not actual abiding rules. They’re stuff like ‘welcome to the Piper Pit, these are your expectations as a member of the Piper Pit.’ It’s something you get with the t-shirt and provides more togetherness,” Doe said.

Putland explained one of the things they do emphasize is rooting for the Pipers not against their opponents.

“We want to make sure we have good sportsmanship,” Putland said. “The MIAC is really adamant on making sure we’re really good sports.”

The Piper Pit is meant to be a raucous and one of the guidelines is for the section to always be together and be as loud as possible.

“We want to get a student section going, like St. Johns, where [opposing teams] are afraid to go the games,” Haus said.

An ulterior motive for this fan section is also to bring together the Hamline community.

“If we see a lot of non-athletes here we want to go to their stuff to support them,” Putland said. “One of the initiatives [of SAAC] is to make sure we’re not just involved in our athletics, we are also going to HUSC events [etc.]…it’ll just bring us closer as a Hamline community.”

The premiere of the Piper Pit will be at the football game this Saturday night to support the Pipers battle for the Paint Bucket against their arch rival Macalester.

Doe said he was impressed with the turnout of last year’s night football game and anticipates this year’s turnout will be even better.

“Last year everyone came out to the game, the stands were really packed…this year we want more of that and with the Piper Pit we’ll have the ‘white-out’ and I just think we’ll top the numbers from last year,” Doe said.

Announcements for other code red events can be found on sandwich boards near the Anderson Center and The Bishop. The Piper Pit t-shirts will be sold at Anderson Center this week on Wednesday, Sept. 10 and Friday, Sept. 12.

Athletic Director Jason Verdugo is excited to see the atmosphere SAAC will create and shared his thoughts via email.

“SAAC will do a great job providing a fun atmosphere prior to the start of the game with food and music. I think that will lead to an exciting and electric atmosphere during the game. The student athletes and coaches in the football program are really looking forward to it,” Verdugo messaged.