Tell us about yourself.
My name is Tim Reiss. I’m in graduate school [at UW]. I’m doing my MS in supply chain management but I started this shindig as an undergrad. I did my undergrad in the business school doing supply chain and operations and technology management and I’m from Palatine, Illinois.
What is AreaRED?
AreaRED is the official student section for Wisconsin athletics, and we facilitate organizing students on our Game Day traditions and getting them involved — as well as loud — and contributing to the environment of whatever sport we’re active in. We as students are represented at almost every Badger sport and that includes your big ones like men’s basketball, football and men’s hockey, but also lesser-known sports we still have a presence at, like softball.
That presence could be everything from starting cheers at these sporting events or it could be working with athletics and our marketing department within the athletic department to come up with giveaways. On game days, we help pass out signs as well as handing out those giveaways.
AreaRED has a committee for football, hockey — which handles men’s and women’s hockey — and basketball, which also handles men’s and women’s basketball. We’ve got a volleyball committee, which is under the name of the MadHouse, and hockey is under the name of the Crease Creatures.
We also have a non-revenue sports committee, which we call Cardinal & White. So those are smaller sports that would be men’s and women’s soccer, softball, wrestling, track and field, cross country and rowing, where you traditionally won’t see a large student population and the goal is to try to get students out to those games.
What goes into preparation for giveaways and athletic events?
It’s a collaboration with the marketing department. At the beginning of the year, they give some ideas of allotments, [for example] based on the amount of T-shirts that they purchased at the beginning of the year, we know that we can do X amount of giveaways at this many games. So then we’ll know we’ve got enough T-shirts to where basketball can do three T-shirts and hockey’s gonna do two T-shirts throughout this season. With the rest of the budget in the past, they’ve done street signs, pit viper glasses, scarves, sweaters, Hawaiian shirts and beanies. Also, [AreaRED] students will work on designs with the athletics department.
Say I come up with a cool idea where Bucky is going to be holding a flag that says “AreaRED,” and he’s gonna be waving it and that’s gonna be the T-shirt. The committee will talk amongst themselves about the upcoming T-shirt design they want to have and they’ll have a deadline from athletics on when the design needs to be finalized. Once we get a rough idea, the athletic department takes care of digitizing it. Once that’s all set up, they get it ordered and then we help hand them out once it comes time for a game. It’s a partnership. We do a lot with the marketing department and they do a lot for us.
What are your responsibilities as president?
It’s not as much day-to-day as people think. I’m still at games, I’m still helping and I volunteer like any other student in our organization. But my job more so is to make sure our executive boards are on top of things and making sure everything athletics needs from us is getting done. If there are any hiccups, I’ll usually end up getting a call from athletics and then we sort that out. That doesn’t happen much, because we have a fantastic group of directors this year. It’s a mix of people who have been on the executive committee before and also some new people.
We’re all people who really care about sports, especially here at Wisconsin, and getting together a good, like-minded group like this has bred some pretty innovative ideas for what we do as a student section and how we get students out to games.
Though you’ve got a director who does hockey, that’s not stopping them from helping out with another sport, like basketball. And even if they’re not helping out, just going to games together is a really fun time.
What led you to get more involved with AreaRED?
I wasn’t in AreaRED until the end of my junior year. A friend of mine was the incoming president of AreaRED who I knew through my business fraternity during my time in undergrad. The running joke was that I was the biggest fan of AreaRED who wasn’t actually in AreaRED. I’d constantly be talking up AreaRED. And so he finally convinced me to join, along with one of my other good friends, who’s now our director, named Peter.
Peter was really the one that pushed me to join. We had met through classes and had gotten pretty close and he convinced me to join his committee. So I applied. They were lucky enough to let me in so I officially joined the Membership and Finance Committee for AreaRED. So with that, [we] rewrote some bylaws, did some stuff with our finances, we had our first ever social events and formal and had a good time. So then I thought, “You know what, why not? I think I got a good shot at doing the role that my friend Ben had done,” and we had talked about it and I decided, “I’m gonna run for this.”
I ran and ended up winning and here we are, but it’s definitely been a journey. I really didn’t think that I’d be president of AreaRED, but it’s been really a phenomenal time ever since and I’m so, so grateful for all the opportunities I’ve been able to have and all the people I’ve been able to become friends with and meet as well along the way.
What’s your favorite part about being in AreaRED?
It’s got to be friendships. Some of my best friends are in this organization. I’ve had some crazy fun experiences with them over time. It’s just been two years, but it has been some of the most fun two years. I love softball. Softball and women’s basketball are some of my favorite events to go to and unfortunately, there are not many other students there and we’re working to fix that problem. But when it’s just that dedicated core group of people, we tend to have a lot of fun.
What goes into creating the newspapers that get placed on each chair in the Kohl Center’s student section?
Before every game, we put out printed newspapers that have memes or funny pictures of the team, or specific players or whatnot, and we’ll joke around with the other team. It’s nothing mean-spirited, but we poke fun at other players, other coaches or recent happenings within the sports. Once the game is [starting], you hold the newspapers up when the opposing team is being called up, and then afterward, you rip it up and you hold it until we make our first basket, whether it’s a two or three, not a free throw. Then you throw up the newspaper pieces and it’s like snow, everything’s falling to the ground and it’s beautiful. That’s one of my favorite traditions we have. It’s always so fun to watch it snow inside the Kohl Center.
But [the process] is actually pretty similar to T-shirts and other giveaways that we do. It’s very much a partnership with the athletic department. And they’ve got a marketing department intern team that designs the final layout. We just send content and then the marketing department fulfills the final design.
How can students get involved with AreaRED aside from just going to sporting events?
We have weekly meetings like most organizations on campus. If someone is just looking to get involved, we’d love to have them at an open meeting. We have those every other week throughout the semester, so that’s every other Monday. Some committees will have open work time then and they can get to know the people in the organization and they can start contributing potential ideas. It’s also an opportunity for our directors and our committee members to get feedback on those designs and ideas that they have. Any student who shows up to any sporting event is technically a member of AreaRED by just participating in the student section.
We need people to come to our club meetings to get stuff rolling. Once you start coming to stuff, you’ll learn how the organization works. You don’t have to have been in the club in any way, shape or form to submit an application to be on a committee. You don’t have to have any ties to the organization prior to submitting. We’ve met a couple of people this year who, out of high school, knew that they wanted to be involved and they applied and we have a couple of freshmen in the org now. But usually, it’s sophomores, juniors and seniors.