THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 18, 1997 TAG: 9702180025
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VICKI L. FRIEDMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 104 lines
Long before tipoff at the Old Dominion field house, the regular crowd shuffles in.
They have come to spend the night with their Lady Monarchs - friends they know as Ticha and Nyree and Aubrey and Clar, friends they greet almost as daughters.
Often wearing homemade ODU sweatshirts, these fans have their own social game going, exchanging pleasantries, barbs and even illness updates about the empty seat in Section 103. But once the game begins, that chatter gives way to good-natured ribbing and often, greedy cackling.
``C'mon, Kathy, call it both ways!'' shouts one older man, who like many, is on a first-name basis with the referees.
``Put in the bench, Wendy! We want Nicole!'' says a group that wants coach Wendy Larry to give little-used reserves such as freshman Nicole Bellinghausen some playing time.
``I should be in church,'' says Audrey Snipes, with a hint of mischievous glee, ``but instead I'm usually here.''
These Lady Monarch boosters, gray-haired, retired and loyal - most can list on one hand the number of games they've missed over the years - display the faithfulness of a loving spouse. They support their team when it's down - 5-21 seven years ago - and when it's up - 23-1 and No. 2 in the nation this year.
They drive for hours to attend road games, sometimes outnumbering, and usually outcheering, the home crowd. With no prodding and no hesitation, they can cite favorite games and moments from two decades earlier, recalling scores and names and detailed play-by-play with photographic accuracy.
That easily outdoes the interest in the team shown by ODU's students, which puzzles the Lady Monarchs' regulars.
``They don't know what they're missing,'' says Ralph Tudor, a retired Army colonel from Hampton.
Bob Mericle and Vernon Mills were driving back to Norfolk from a Charlotte, N.C. basketball tournament in 1970 when they decided to stop in Durham for coffee. There, in the parking lot of a truckstop, they started an ``unofficial Lady Monarchs fan club.''
Mericle and Mills had begun following women's basketball and were particularly enthralled with the sport's personal atmosphere.
Back in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women years - predating the sport's NCAA status - the fan club, which grew to more than 40 members, often treated players to brunch at the Omni or buffet dinners at the homes of boosters. After games they'd chit-chat over cheese and crackers provided by the university. One Christmas each player received a garment bag with her name on it.
``One day (then-coach) Marianne Stanley came to me and told me, `You can't do that anymore,' '' Mericle recalls.
The advent of the NCAA, and its stringent regulations, brought the demise of such informality. But the fans, who largely prefer women's basketball to men's, kept coming.
Bill Yount, 70, of Chesapeake explains the difference.
``You don't have all this jumping around and showing off and hanging on the basket, knocking each other down,'' he says. ``Basketball is supposed to be a non-contact sport. Guys put the ball under their hands and carry it four steps. I just like the women better.''
Yount doesn't even mind sitting through the Colonial Athletic Association schedule, filled with opponents who are in the Lady Monarchs' conference but not in their league. He prefers the Colonial to the spread-out Sun Belt Conference, which ODU played in for nine years before joining the CAA in 1991.
``The competition isn't all that good, but it's nice for us to be in a conference where we play the state teams and have something of a rivalry going,'' Yount says.
And though discussion of building a 10,000-seat convocation center excites coaches and administrators, the ODU faithful hold an affinity for the cozy field house, which seats 4,855.
Charles Devane, 56 and retired, was pushed into attending his first game in the Nancy Lieberman late-1970s heyday.
``And it just so happens they were playing Tennessee,'' he recalls. ``They had a packed house and I was way back in the corner. I got to enjoyin' it.''
Snipes, a season-ticket holder for 17 years with her husband Harris, appreciates the charm of the field house: ``Here you're right close to everything.''
For these folks, traveling to road games means more than driving to a couple places a few hours away. The '80 nationals were in Eugene, Ore.; the '83 regional in State College, Pa.; the '90 regional in Knoxville, Tenn.
``And you can bet we'll be in Cincinnati,'' says Hannah Mericle of this year's Final Four site.
Larry, who has been at ODU as a player, assistant and head coach for 23 of the past 27 years, has a deep appreciation of the program's fan base. She encourages her players to applaud the ODU crowd after road games, and at home they mingle extensively with fans, many of whom bustle down to press row and crowd around the broadcasters to listen to the postgame show.
``There are some people that I think, bar hospitalization, have been at every home game I've coached - and then some,'' says Larry, who knows many of the fans by name. ``You don't have to worry about if a bus is going to make it. You know they're going to be there.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Hannah Mericle of Norfolk leans in behind ODU coach Wendy Larry to
eavesdrop on Larry's postgame radio interview. Mericle has attended
Lady Monarchs games since 1976.
Color photo by BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
George and Anita Hill have been loyal ODU women's basketball fans
for 20 years. Pictured watching ODU's recent game against American
University at the ODU field house, the Hills are typical of the
older fans who turn out to support the second-ranked Lady Monarchs.