SGA member making pancakes. Photo by The Alabamian staff. By A.K. Miller
On Feb 27. the University of Montevallo hosted two basketball games. Both the women’s and men’s teams were going up against Valdosta State University.
Just beyond the walls that were containing the energy and excited shouts coming from the gym in UM’s student activity center, the people of SGA prepared and served pancakes to students fromthe small kitchen adjacent to the building’s long main hallway.
Turnout ranged between sixty to seventy people during the hour that SGA members were cooking pancakes. SGA hosted the tailgate as a way to bring out a big crowd to the universities’ biggestbasketball games of the season.
“It’s a good opportunity that SGA wanted to bring to help promote athletic games to students to get more students out here going to athletic games,” stated SGA president Caleb Jernigan.
The event was partially focused on the idea of a tailgate with pancakes but as stated by Hannah Grabowski, the event was “to help aid the connection between non-athletics and athletics.” But therewas far more to the event.
Not only was the event promoting athletics, but it was also providing an effective way for students to socialize with peers as stated by one of the event goers, “Usually, [tailgates] are really fun and great for interaction, you get to meet a lot of new people and it’s just a great time to get to talk to everybody and seeing your friends.”
Members of the athletic teams also attended the event during halftime as a reprieve from their sport. “I think it brings athletics and like other parts of the school together kind of, because I think athletics is sometimes out by itself but whenever we do tailgates and stuff like that it really brings other parts of the student body here to games,” Sage Lage, a junior at UM and a member of the school’s dance team, stated.
With the forged connections between students, the tailgate ended in success.
