Like many fans, Jake Sillick and Elizabeth Graham camped outside for the best seats in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center, road-tripped out-of-state and cheered on the UF men’s basketball team for years together — but didn’t meet each other for four years.
“It’s really sad we spent so much time [within] 50 feet [of] another and didn’t know each other,” said Graham, a 24-year-old electrical engineering graduate student.
But as of Sept. 12, the Men’s Basketball Rowdies is an official UF student organization.
Sillick, president and 24-year-old computer and electrical engineering sixth-year, said the organization has garnered 40 registered members and about 200 likes on its Facebook page so far. Students can join for free online.
The group will give input to the University Athletic Association about how to organize the student section.
“We’re trying to make the O’Dome one of the scariest places for opponents to play in,” Graham said. “Getting in their heads is one of the ways we do that.”
“The student section would shake, and you felt like it would detach from the building,” she said.
Contact Michael Scott Davidson at mdavidson@alligator.org.
