Tonight @ UWM

[UIC Alum]

Hey fellow Flames,

I'm a UIC alumnus living in Milwaukee. I don't get down to Chicago much, but I try and catch every game up here that UIC plays. I'm becoming more and more of a soccer fan every time I see the Flames play.

However I do have a problem that I feel I should share with you. While UIC fans at the Marquette game up here acted very professionally and courteously of their hosts, I can't say the same for tonight.

A handful of UIC students had taken over one half of the bleachers in the student end zone at UW-M's field. I swelled with pride as I saw the UIC students cheer louder than UW-M's students (although I think the big drum helped).

Somewhere in the middle of the first half, things changed. UW-M and UIC students began jawing back and forth, which is expected (especially since the rivalry with UWM is special, at least to me and coach Collins). But UIC students took it way too far. My wife and I felt embarrassed when UIC students began mooning UW-M's section, and one student even stripped naked (or at least it looked like it from where we were standing). Milwaukee police had to go over to stop their behavior, and even then a UIC student tried picking a fight with a UW-M student. It was painfully obvious that the UIC faithful had far too much to drink.

I was absolutely disgusted with the way UIC students acted at the game, and at the terrible job they did representing our fine university.

On our way to our car, the UIC students were taunting UW-M fans, including parents as far as we could tell, without any provocation whatsoever. If my wife hadn't stopped me, I would have gone over and given the students a piece of my mind.

I don't frequent this message board much, but I figured someone here would know the students who attended the game and could pass along this message. This university doesn't need its students parading around like drunken monkeys. They made UW-M----YES!----UW-M students look like saints, no small feat.

I hope someone on here can pass along the message to the Flames fans; I would hate to see a nationally televised NCAA Title game complete with UIC students stripping on ESPN.

[uic PROUD fan]

congrats on being an alum and seeing a class uic soccer team...but with all do respect, SHUT UP about our fans...those guys are the 12th man for the squad and all the top teams in the country have em as rowdy or even rowdier than what you described...you really sound like a school girl,,,and ESPN soccer writers are the ones who claimed UCSB fans were the best and they are 100% worse than our fans with obscenity...if you don't like it please stay at home with your boss lady and follow gametracker

[Big D]

With all due respect to the 2nd poster, I don't know how you can condone that type of fan behavior. UIC fans have been the 12th man all year, and they did that without mooning and stripping naked. Certainly, that is going way overboard. Did it happen? Who knows. But if it did, then I completely disagree with it, and the police should have been called. It's not just improper fan behavior...it's improper everyday behavior in everyday society. It's called indecent exposure.

Let's stop the nonsense, cheer hard, and let our play do the talking....we haven't lost to UWM since 2003. We're 5-0-2 against them since that time. That's called domination.

[uic PROUD fan]

well what the f--- do you think dumb a--, don't you you think I/ everybody would know if someone really "striiped"...thats the worst bs exaggeration i have heard in a long time and yet again i say...SHUT THE F--- UP ABOUT OUR FANS...they are the best...better than the rest

[ss2002]

I am a proud UIC fan too, but I cheer without getting drunk and making a fool out of myself. Like Big D said, Mooning is not proper behavior in public. Also, do you really need to pick fights with the other team's fans to enjoy watching a great soccer team? It was a close game. You should have been paying attention to that instead. A little good natured taunting is one thing, but when you are actually aiming to make other fans angry it's a whole other story. The police have better things to do than keep an eye on college kids at an organized event, so what happened had to be a little out of control. I've been to a few UIC soccer games this season and I love the student cheering section and the drum. My question is, since the student cheering is so great at home and doesn't involve this type of behavior, why does your conduct have to change on the road?

[soccer fan]

I want to point out a couple of things:

1. Unless someone was actually at the game, and actually near the cheering section, they should not be offering opinions about what did or did not happen. I don't care if you were across the field, were you THERE and can you say positively that the UIC fans were picking a fight with anybody? I say this because I was at the Horizon finals last year, and saw UWGB fans and even parents of UWGB insult the Fury and call them idiots for absolutely nothing. They even sent some administrator type from UIC over to ask the Fury to tone it down and not jeer the opposing players so ruthlessly. They were told it is OK to cheer FOR your team, but NOT OK to cheer against the other team, nor mock the opposing players when they make a dumb play or turn over the ball. Can you imagine that? This is NCAA division 1, and some kind souls are still worried about little Johnny getting his feelings hurt?

2. Please don't assume the parents of the players are necessarily angels. Personally, I can't stand to be around large numbers of soccer parents at games because they have a tendency to be among the WORST sports and BIGGEST crybabies in the entire field. Not all, mind you, by any means, but some definitely have maturity issues so I would not be the least bit surprised to see a few rogue parents mixing it up with students.

3. There is no mention of this alleged incident on either the UWM or Big Soccer message boards. That is not to say it didn't happen exactly the way the original poster said it did (I wasn't there), but there is no independent confirmation.

4. The UIC cheering section has a reputation, for sure, and since soccer is not as big a deal elsewhere, there is plenty of room for their bombastic style to be misinterpreted. People not familiar with the professional game, people who wouldn't think twice about fans screaming and going berserk at a football or basketball game expect baseball crowd behavior at a soccer game. The truth is, soccer crowds are much closer to hockey crowds in their overall demeanor. Minus the fights in the stands, of course.

5. If UIC's record is really 5-0-2 against UWM since '03, I don't call that domination. I call that LOAFING. If UWM is putting a crew of slackers on the field year after year with no heart, no pride, and no desire to beat UIC they deserve to have their field taken over and humiliated on their home turf. The stated attendance at that game was 357. That is absolutely pathetic, so it sounds to me like their students are loafing, too.

That said, obscenity has no place at NCAA sports, including soccer. It is important that people feel comfortable bringing their children to games.

[PantherU.com]

I was at this game, seeing as I'm a UWM fan. No exaggeration...mooning happened. One guy pulled his pants down and his shirt up...kinda Butters from South Park peeing style if you watch the show...and shook his junk around for a good 5 seconds. There was another guy who just whipped his dick out, but we could see it just well enough to know what it was, so I doubt the first poster saw that one.

We set out at the beginning to try and "out-positive" them and completely ignore them. That didn't work, since they had the drum. We had been told a couple years ago at a HL tourney game that we couldn't have a drum, so we assumed that was the law of the land and haven't brought any noisemakers to a game since. The drum is great for UIC...every time we tried to start a chant, the drum was just louder than we could be. But now we know we can have a drum.

I can also say in the affirmative that they did start it. They were yelling at us and we got drawn into it after some personal s@#! was said to our people, including them yelling "c*nts" at two UWM girls who walked past their bleachers and didn't respond to the guys hitting on them.

We weren't completely innocent either. Some UWM student who never goes to games decided to steal one of their checkerboard flags. We're still trying to find out who he is so we can take it back and give it to you guys when we come down for men's basketball. We apologize, but he doesn't represent us.

A UWM student was with them, since they were her friends from home, and she claimed that they were annihilated drunk; that made sense to us.

We have been very quiet for most men's soccer games, because it's just so disheartening to see a team that was a great power be completely f@#!ed up the way we are. I loved being in the NCAA tournament every year, but it doesn't look like we'll ever get back with Coleman as coach.

BTW the Klotsche Krazies are abandoning our men's soccer program until Jon Coleman is gone and a new coach is brought in.

Like Big D, flip it around and 0-5-2 isn't acceptable for what is supposed to be the biggest rivalry in HL men's soccer based on success of both teams...we would have the most successful team in the conference over our history, I believe, if your team wasn't so freaking awesome at men's soccer. Our board is calling for Coleman's head, and has been since September.

[PantherU.com]

Oct 27, 2008 12:32:40 GMT -6 @soccer fan said:

I want to point out a couple of things:

1. Unless someone was actually at the game, and actually near the cheering section, they should not be offering opinions about what did or did not happen. I don't care if you were across the field, were you THERE and can you say positively that the UIC fans were picking a fight with anybody? I say this because I was at the Horizon finals last year, and saw UWGB fans and even parents of UWGB insult the Fury and call them idiots for absolutely nothing. They even sent some administrator type from UIC over to ask the Fury to tone it down and not jeer the opposing players so ruthlessly. They were told it is OK to cheer FOR your team, but NOT OK to cheer against the other team, nor mock the opposing players when they make a dumb play or turn over the ball. Can you imagine that? This is NCAA division 1, and some kind souls are still worried about little Johnny getting his feelings hurt?

We were also threatened at the LUC-UWM soccer championship yesterday. One LUC campus cop threatened to "lock you up buddy" because I yelled "You Suck!" at Cynthia Morote-Ariza.

I'm 100% with you on this one.