Wiedmer: UTC athletes offer support across sports

Painted head to waist in blue and gold paint, Ben Rickett didn't look much like a collegiate golfer last Saturday afternoon at Frost Stadium.

But there the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga senior was, part of a blue-tinted five-man cheering section for the Lady Mocs softball team.

“I was the ‘O’ in ‘Go UTC,’” said Rickett after the Lady Mocs’ Southern Conference tournament crown had clinched the team’s second straight NCAA bid. “Four of the guys needed another letter so I took one for the team.”

It should be noted that Rickett is from London, England, so his previous exposure to softball before arriving in the Scenic City was nil. Yet he never hesitated to support his fellow UTC athletes.

“We’re good friends with a lot of the softball girls, and when we won the SoCon a couple of weeks ago they did the same for us,” Rickett explained later. “We were just returning the favor.”

Thing is, the favors keep getting returned and returned and returned. Rickett and a few members of the football team dipping themselves in paint weren’t the only Mocs at Frost. Members of the men's and women's basketball teams were also there. So was men's hoops coach John Shulman and his family.

And all this without school being in session. Talk about taking one for the team.

“It was noticeable to me, as well as a lot of other people I spoke to over the weekend,” said UTC athletic director Rick Hart. “It's something we strive for, having athletes from different teams support each other. I remember seeing a bunch of women tennis players at the spring football game. Our student-athletes seem to be better integrated into our campus than anywhere else I've ever been. I think that's pretty cool.”

And Hart has spent considerable time at two of college athletics’ most successful programs — North Carolina and Oklahoma.

“You can't put a price tag on that,” said UTC softball coach Frank Reed when asked about the support of the entire athletic department. “This just shows you the camaraderie we have at UTC. We’re all here for each other.”

To further drive home that point, Reed had wrestling coach Chris Bono speak to the team on Tuesday and football coach Russ Huesman address the squad on Wednesday. Shulman will give a pep talk today just before the Lady Mocs board the bus for Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Friday's NCAA opener against Texas.

“The support definitely seems more than in past years,” said Reed, who’s just completing his eighth year at UTC. “My phone has rung off the wall since we’ve won. But we’ve had a lot of athletes cheering for us all year.”

According to associate AD Laura Mincy, it all starts with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which consists of two athletes from each team.

“We’ve really tried to improve our student-athlete experience,” she said. “We call it athletes for athletes. During the year they pick out one game that they want everybody to come to, but it really happened spontaneously over the (SoCon) tourney.”

Junior pitcher Brooke Loudermilk is one of softball’s two reps. She says the support shown her teammates, “Has been a big change from my freshman year.”

Added freshman catcher Jenni Martin, “You pretty much hang out with other athletes, so it means a lot when they’re there to support you. I don’t know if they're as close at other schools as we are here.”

Along with Rickett, one of the five “Go UTC” blue guys was football tight end Patrick Wilkinson, who convinced the group to toss baby powder up in the air, a la NBA superstar LeBron James. Wilkinson also admitted that it took more than an hour, “to get that paint off.”

Added Rickett, “My shower is now blue because of it.”

Yet Wilkinson also said, “That’s probably the most fun we’ve ever had at a spring event.”

So the next time someone begins talking about all that’s wrong with UTC athletics, from the APR scores to the lousy football to the declining attendance figures in men's basketball, tell them about all that's right with the athletes’ camaraderie.

“We’ll be there this weekend, too,” said Wilkinson with a grin earlier this week. “We’ll have a bunch of guys pile in a car and head down there.”

If the rest of this year of UTC athletes for athletes is any indication, one car won’t be nearly enough.