Rice Rally fights for school spirit
If Rice students show up for sports games, they’ll love them — the trick is to keep them coming back. This is something Hannah Wixom and Morgan Toran, two of the three co-presidents of Rice Rally, agree on.
“Rice is a very academic school, which is awesome,” said Wixom, a Sid Richardson College junior. “But maybe one thing that we can all commit to is also trying to support athletics a little bit more, getting out there and just seeing what it has to offer.”
Rice Rally’s mission is to bring the Rice community together through sports, whether through supporting student athletes or meeting new people at athletic events, Wixom said.
The three junior co-presidents were all recently re-elected in the Student Association election. Priya Armour, the third co-president, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Growing up, Toran said sports were a key part of her childhood, uniting neighborhoods and communities. She’s approaching her Rice Rally term with a similar vision, she said.
“Our mission is to bring that same feeling to other Rice students,” Toran, a Hanszen College junior, wrote in an email to the Thresher, “so that when they leave Rice, they’ve created lasting memories.”
Hong Lin Tsai is a merchandise designer for Rice Rally who creates limited edition T-shirts and stickers given out by Rice Rally at games.
He said Rice Rally is unique among college spirit clubs because of the unique bond Rice Rally fosters between students and their athlete peers.
“A lot of people think that we’re just a regular spirit club,” said Tsai, a Brown College junior. “What Rally does [is] foster that family relationship where it brings students closer together, and also fosters that family relationship between each other, between students, the athletes, and us as Rally members.”
Rice Rally also works with Rice Athletics’ marketing team, ranging from collaborative Instagram posts to coordinated giveaways, Toran said.
Athletics’ marketing team has a new initiative aimed at increasing game attendance by hosting residential college tailgates — in a collaboration between the two branches, Athletics provides the food while Rice Rally brings the students.
“We provide volunteers and organize the logistics of the tailgate setup and getting in contact with the college president,” Toran said. “Connecting the residential colleges is super important to all of us because at the end of the day, athlete or not, we all have our residential colleges in common, and that is a connecting factor. We have definitely seen an improvement in attendance and engagement this season.”
To entice students to attend games, Rice Rally often gives away prizes including Rice and Sammy-themed merchandise, food, technology and kitchen appliances.
“We have a really, really big budget,” Tsai said. “We’ve given out flat-screen TVs, we’ve given out Ninja CREAMis, we’ve given out headphones, all sorts of fun stuff.”
Jennifer Greene, director of marketing for Rice Athletics, said her favorite recent giveaway was Sammy basketball stickers designed by Tsai, and detailed her favorite game-time tradition.
“I love the pizza box tower tradition that started at the homecoming football game in 2022,” Greene wrote in an email to the Thresher. “I'm sure being on ESPN doesn't hurt the excitement surrounding it either. I think we got up to about 100 pizza boxes this past season.”
Megan Vila, assistant director of marketing, said she also gave an honorable mention to pizza box stacking at football but was most excited to create a new tradition with Rice Rally through a crawfish boil for an April 15 baseball game against the University of Houston.
Tsai said attendance has increased, despite the busy time of the semester and what he said were lackluster athletic results.
“I think it's a really, really positive thing, even though a lot of people are busy and given the fact that most of the sports teams have not as good performances at this time of year,” Tsai said. “It's still really good to see all the people still showing up through games and still supporting our athletes as well.”
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