Greek Joes vs. College Pros: Fraternities battled against sport clubs

Oct 13 2009 - 10:06pm | Dustin Porterfield

Eleven fraternities converged at the Student Recreation Center Sunday amidst inclement weather conditions with a good cause in mind.

The first “Greek Joes vs. College Pros” event was held with all proceeds going to the Special Olympics of Texas. The event brought in more than $1,000.

“It was a huge success,” said Jeremy Klaff, Interfraternity Council vice president of service and chief organizer of the event. “All of this wouldn’t have been possible without the service committee, the Rec Center and all the fraternities that participated. This took about seven months worth of planning to get all of it done properly.”

The event pitted the average male fraternity member against Texas State athletes in five sports – basketball, volleyball, swimming, baseball and soccer. The participants of the event were members of their respective sport clubs with the exception of the university’s women’s basketball team. Each fraternity organized teams of five with one player for each sport. The only team competition was volleyball, which consisted of two club players against all five members on each of the fraternities’ teams.

“When I first started planning this, I got nowhere with the athletic teams,” said Klaff, electronic media junior. “The only response I got was from the women’s basketball team. It wasn’t until I teamed up with the Rec (that) the ball really (started) rolling. It was all pretty stressful.”

Two events – baseball and soccer – were slated to be outdoors and were in jeopardy of being canceled because of the weather. However, Klaff said because of quick thinking and the help of the Rec, the events were moved to the upstairs courts.

“When I first heard about (moving the sports inside), I was a little bit skeptical about how it would turn out, especially when I looked outside at how bad the weather was,” said Doug Schneider, biochemistry junior, who participated in baseball and volleyball. “But seeing (as) how everything worked out, it really surprised me. The best part was getting to compete against the sport club guys. A couple of them actually lost. I hope they put this on again next year.”

Klaff believes the Greek Joes vs. College Pros event is the first of more to come because of its charitable success.

“Hopefully this is an event that people begin to anticipate in the fall every year,” Klaff said. “The sport club players were a joy to work with.

They came up here, worked all day and never complained. In the future, we hope to get more people and athletes involved and raise more money for the Special Olympics.”

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