The Pierce College Associated Students Organization hosted its first baseball tailgate event on April 21 at Joe Kelly Field.
Lara Conrady-Wong, student engagement coordinator and counselor at Pierce, aims to connect student leaders and promote awareness of sport games and other events taking place on campus by hosting a baseball tailgating that was open to all students, staff and faculty.
“One of our initiatives for today is to spread the word that there are lots of ways to get involved in campus events, planning events and student government that maybe people don’t know about yet,” Conrady-Wong said. “There’s so many awesome events at Pierce College that students don’t know about, so ASO is just trying to help students be more involved on campus.”
Alex Alvarez, the ASO Club Council president is confident that these kinds of events will create opportunities for camaraderie among the student population at the college.
“The tailgate is an opportunity for students to be more involved on campus, just to have fun,” Alvarez said. “Lately, we don’t have that much publicity for our athletic teams and I think this is a great way to help students be more aware that we have sports on campus.”
Unsure of how to best approach the task of captivating students from both the academic and sports populations at Pierce, Conrady-Wong bet on the idea of a tailgating event in hopes of engaging students for semesters to come.
“We thought we would start out with a baseball tailgate, and hopefully it’s a success so we can start the tailgate tradition going into next year and we can support more student athletes at Pierce,” Conrady-Wong said.
Offering free pizza, cookies and other refreshments to students who attend the tailgating event was only one of the ways the ASO attracted students to come out and participate, according to Conrady-Wong.
“We’re actually doing prizes as the game goes on, so we talked about doing some things by innings just to encourage people to stay at the game a little longer,” Conrady-Wong said.
Dan DeLeon, a Pierce College student studying Broadcasting, was taken back by both the beauty of the weather, and the ability of the ASO to support and put on an event that drew out such great student participation.
“I’m enjoying myself in this beautiful weather during this nice day that we have,” DeLeon said. “The students have come out to make this tailgate seem more than just a smattering of students, it’s actually turned into something pretty exciting.”
“The fact that Pierce puts on these type of events is super exciting and i’m glad to be a part of it,” DeLeon said.
According to ASO Vice President Barbara Lombrano, their main objectives of the tailgate event was to support athletics and engage and inform students of the opportunities available for them through the ASO.
“We wanted to put together a tailgate to have students come out and support our baseball team, to get more engagement with students on campus, to network and learn more about ASO and the different clubs,” Lombrano said. “And really to just support each other here on campus.”
