UMass Magazine Online

Winter 2003

Departments

Around the Pond

Features

All my best friends are here

One giant molecule

I learnt to dream of Sicily

The Landscape Beautiful

Around the Pond

When the world is mud-luscious

Janine Tangney '03




	photo by Ben Barnhart

FROM THE DIRTY DEPTHS OF three makeshift volleyball courts behind Totman Gym, a gooey, mud-soaked figure emerged with outstretched arms, threatening to slime anyone who crossed her path.

“You’re my hero,” shouted Maria Keegan ’02, as she ran toward Keith Healy, who waved his bullhorn in front of him for protection before announcing the next round of games. Despite futile attempts to stay clean, anyone within sight of the second annual Oozefest – a nine-team mud volleyball tournament held at UMass last October – was bound to get at least a little dirty.
Healy, who is the chair of Oozefest and president of STARS – the Student Alumni Relations Society – shook his head at the mud, which was already hardening.

“The fire department’s been here three times already!” he said.

The Amherst Fire Department’s student force hosed down the courts the night before the tournament, early the next morning and again right before the competition to create muck for the players to get down and dirty in.

Why would students and alumni spend precious weekend time playing volleyball in the mud? Most chose to participate because of their affiliation with STARS, which aims to help build school spirit while giving students a fun event to participate in. Although the event is still new, Healy said that it has grown in popularity, and predicted it will become bigger each year.

“We’re only in our second year and we’re trying to grow. The alumni association has given us funding to be able to put this on,” he said.

Melissa Vara of university alumni relations hopes Oozefest will become a tradition at UMass as it has at schools like the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Rhode Island and the University of Connecticut.

Those schools draw as many as 100 teams to their mud tournaments, she said. “That’s what we’re hoping to have happen here, just like what happened with sport management’s Haigis Hoopla, which started out small and grew to be huge.”

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