Of hotels and home crowds

On the eve of the Terrapins field hockey team's Oct. 22 road date at North Carolina, Missy Meharg was presented with a difficulty: How do you find a way to add a bit of red to the sea of Carolina blue the Terps would find themselves awash in at Henry Stadium?

Nearly 300 miles away from their College Park home, gathering support in Chapel Hill, N.C., was no easy task.

So the longtime coach took matters into her own hands.

As it happened, the Terrapins men's soccer team was also in Chapel Hill that weekend taking on the Tar Heels, along with members of its fan base, the Crew.

What Meharg did next spoke as much to her own generosity as it did to her oft-stated goal of expanding fan support for her championship-level program. For the price of just one hotel room, Meharg convinced a group of Crew members to stay overnight for the field hockey game the next day.

"I was so happy to meet those guys," Meharg said late last month. "I'm really happy to do it."

The show of mutual support started almost by accident. Following the team's practice in Chapel Hill that Friday afternoon, Meharg saw senior history major Austin Bartolomei-Hill and a group of Crew members who had traveled the five hours to North Carolina to root on the men's soccer team.

After learning that no Crew members were planning on staying for the field hockey game the next day because they didn't have a place to sleep, Meharg had an offer: She would purchase an additional room in the team's hotel. That was enough to convince Bartolomei-Hill, senior accounting major Meghan Cadigan and junior computer science major Adam Lauer to stay until Saturday.

"We were tailgating in the parking lot for the men's [soccer] game and we were right next to [the field hockey team's] field, so we were just yelling through the fence at them," Bartolomei-Hill said. "After they just kind of walked through where we were, and Coach just kind of stopped and said, ‘Hey, are you guys coming to the game tomorrow? I'll pay for your hotel room.'"

That wouldn't be the last time the Crew and Meharg met on the eve of the field hockey game, however. Meharg brought her team to the Terps' soccer game that night, joining forces with the group in the front row of the bleachers for much of the contest, a 1-1 draw.

"We were able to be at the men's soccer game with the Crew and the team together," Meharg said. "That was a blast."

Bartolomei-Hill, Cadigan and Lauer were there for their second Terps game the following day. And though the Terps ultimately fell to the Tar Heels by one goal, having some red in the crowd at least made the loss a bit easier to stomach.

"The Crew stayed," Meharg said after the game. "I was really, really fired up about that."

Meharg's gesture in Chapel Hill was far from her first to help augment the student presence at Terps field hockey games. With the help of the team's marketing department, Meharg this summer worked with the Resident Life Department's new Terps-for-Terps program, which links dorms with certain university athletics teams.

The result for the field hockey team, which was paired with the Elkton and Easton dorms, was the Club. And while the group's impact hasn't been that noticeable this season, Meharg hopes the team's relationship with the Crew will help the Terps' student fan group continue to grow.

"Hopefully we can get the Crew to help mentor the Club," Meharg said. "To have the energy, the numbers and the passion for the women would be phenomenal."

The continued efforts from Meharg began to pay dividends Friday, as nearly a dozen members of the men's soccer team's loyal fan base showed up for the field hockey team's ACC Tournament semifinal matchup with Duke. Meharg's dream, if only for one game, had become reality.

"[Meharg] was like, ‘I really like what you guys do, I like that you keep it PG, I like that you're loud, and I want someone like that for field hockey. Will you guys come out for us?'" Bartolomei-Hill said at Friday's game. "So I told her, ‘Yeah, we'll come out [for] ACCs.' It's a big game, so we're here to support them."

The Crew couldn't help the Terps avoid a 2-1 defeat at the hands of the Blue Devils on Friday, but their efforts in the crowd did not go unnoticed.

"You can definitely hear them get louder when play gets closer to the circle," midfielder Maxine Fluharty said Friday.

"It was really the first time from the bench I could hear a group of people," Meharg added yesterday.

Though it isn't yet set in stone, the Terps will likely host this weekend's first and second rounds of NCAA Tournament, something they have done the past eight years. Meharg has made it known that she wants students at those games, but when it comes to making it happen, she's going to leave it to the professionals.

"I'm relying on the Crew," Meharg said. "I'm going to give them that job."

vitale@umdbk.com