When most people think of the Bearcats Sports Complex, they think success.

Millions of dollars were put into it, and it finally feels like Binghamton University students are going to watch football in a stadium. The BSC has turned games into events and students into hooligans. Although everything seems to be working out for the best, I would have to disagree.

What freshmen, sophomores and probably most of the Bearcat Hooligans don’t remember are games on the field that now only sees the backs of fans. Sure, there was only seating for a couple of hundred fans, but the bleachers were never packed anyway. If you went to a game down by that field, odds are you were a true fan of Binghamton soccer. There weren’t any songs or color-coded themes by the crowd, but there was closeness to the action that simply cannot be felt in the BSC.

I remember watching the 2006 America East semi-finals between Binghamton and Boston University on a frigid day in early November. There was no score halfway through the second half when about 15 Binghamton athletes marched their way from the West Gym parking lot, past all the bleachers, and parked themselves on the edge of the field, wearing nothing but shorts and painted-on No. 9 Joey Nielson jerseys. As regulation was coming to the end, so too, it seemed, did the Bearcats’ season. Then, late in the second half, Nielson put a goal in the back of the net off of an assist from current senior Cody Germain. The crowd went wild and Nielson ran over to his friends and danced with them on the touch line, nothing separating the crowd from the field except for some thin yellow twine.

This celebration would not have been possible in the BSC, and the proximity of the crowd made the energy level feel the same as current games do, only with 1,500 fewer people. The game was a stalemate through both overtimes and then came one of the most exciting moments in Bearcats athletics history. Then a freshman, Jason Stenta stood between the pipes for penalty kicks and miraculously made the save of his life. After Barry Neville put away the final penalty kick for Binghamton, the fans, myself included, charged the field and celebrated with the team.

There was nothing holding the fans back from doing whatever they pleased. They were not Student Association-chartered; they had nobody to answer to. Everybody that was at that game wanted to be there because of their love of the game. It was not, as it is now, the cool thing to do. There were only 850 people at the America East final that year, nearly twice as many fans than any other game at home that season. The Bearcats beat Vermont only to lose one week later at Harvard in the NCAA tournament.

I love that the players now get to play in front of thousands of fans, but I hate that many of the people in the crowd have roster sheets, not to ridicule opponents, but to check the names of the Bearcats players. I hope that there is another opportunity to charge the field; I just fear that Harpur’s Ferry will not be prepared to mend all of the twisted ankles that the 10-foot drop will surely cause.