Don't be surprised if you see some extra bodies in the stands at Penn sporting events next semester. And don't be surprised if those bodies look athletic enough to be in the game, themselves.
The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee plans to kick off Quaker Days, an initiative to strengthen attendance at sporting events by drawing other athletes to games.
"We're trying to make SAAC more of a dual-purpose committee," said Whitney Tagliavini, a member of SAAC and a jumper on the track team. "We're trying to strengthen the athlete community, and we're trying to get our name out there, basically."
The Quaker Days is the latest in a flurry of SAAC activity aimed at achieving that goal. The group is also working on a Toys and Teams program, much like Toys for Tots, where each Penn team would sponsor a family for the holiday season.
Each Penn team has already chosen its allotted "Quaker Day" - one event per semester starting this spring. For each of these events, SAAC representatives and team captains will encourage each and every Quakers student-athlete to attend.
The vision is to engineer a mass cheering section comprised of athletes' peers for at least one event per team per semester. But in order for the project to work, SAAC members know they need the legitimacy within the athlete community that comes with name recognition.
In the past, SAAC's functions have mostly been limited to fundraising events. Now, with a slew of new projects in store, group members hope to raise their profile on campus and within the athlete community in order to have the clout necessary to achieve its goals.
Camille Richard, another jumper on the track team, is the representative to the NCAA for the Ivy League's SAAC groups. Richard attended a conference in New Haven last weekend, and discovered that other schools had many of the same ideas. This weekend, she will attend a conference at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.
"We're just trying to be more involved, so people aren't like, what is SAAC? Student Activity Club, or whatever?' No - Student-Athlete Advisory Committee," Tagliavini said.
With Quaker Days, SAAC hopes to bolster attendance by tapping into what Tagliavini calls a "huge athletic community," and in so doing strengthen that very community.
"Poor volleyball girls, or even wrestling, a lot of people don't even know about them," she said. "They don't get a lot of athletes from other sports. . As athletes, it's really important that we get to know each other and, more importantly, support each other."
