Ducktails Woohoo!

Being in the USA and around one of the biggest colleges in the country - the University of Oregon - we wanted to check out some of the college sport. As we are big followers of athletics in both the UK and US we were already well aware of some of the differences within our own sport, but didn‘t know too much about some of the American based sports. We got the feeling though that university sport was taken much more seriously in the US, especially as there seems to be college basketball and American football on TV most of the time.

Even so, we were slightly surprised when we went to a women’s college basketball game at the MacArthur Court at Oregon University and there were over 4000 people there! It wasn’t even as if it was just other students supporting or families of the players, there seemed to be actual members of the public there! No-one gives a monkeys about university sport in the UK so why do people care here? Well when things got going we saw why. The whole experience was really professional, the players were all really good, both of the teams had full-time coaches and both teams even had their own cheerleading teams with them! There was even a band playing before the game, during time-outs and half-time and then after the match. To our amusement they played a bit of theme tune from ducktails because of the University of Oregon’s nickname - the ducks! Classic! It really was a great atmosphere and it meant that the whole crowd got into the spirit of the game.

When the game got going the ducks began to dominate proceedings against local rivals and fellow Division 1 side Oregon State University. The University of Oregon got off to a great start before things evened up, although in the end it was still a comfortable victory for the ducks with the final score being 82 -62. I had a rough idea what was going on throughout the match, but I’m not sure Andrea had too much clue - she was too busy being distracted by the Duck Mascot running around and hugging fans.


The distracting duck



Ducktails!!