How did you become a UConn fan? | Page 5 | The Boneyard

How did you become a UConn fan?

My love of UConn basketball began in 1962 when I was 11 years old. I'd take the transistor radio to bed & listen to the games.Back then the names were Toby kimball & Danny Spider Hesford. Then we started hearing about these freshman led by Wes Bialsuknia & Tom Penders that could beat the varsity (freshman couldn't play varsity back then). Fell in love with that team, Bialasuknia, Penders, Holowaty, Ritter who joined Toby Kimball the next year. Been a huge fan ever since. What a grand ride it has been.
 
On a February night in 1954, I was a 15-yr-old surfing the radio when I heard George Ehrlich's voice calling the UConn game on WHAY New Britain. I became one of the legion of Connectict natives who became UConn fans solely through the medium of the radio. I lived and died with the team through ten seasons before I ever physically laid eyes on the team in 1964. There is no way people today can appreciate the massiveness of the radio audience that the voice of George Ehrlich built for UConn basketball in the 50's and 60's. It established the UConn brand upon which everything that followed was built.
 
Remember listening to George Erlich broadcast the games from the field house. Saw Tony Kimball and Wes Bialosuknia play there as a kid. Later became an alum. Made the NIT when I was there, beat St. John’s but then lost to BC. Tony Hanson days with Dee Rowe as the coach
 
I was 8 years old in 1996 watching the Big East championship with my Dad. When Ray Allen sank the game winner vs AI, I'll never forget my Dad jumping up and down on the couch shouting and celebrating and me running around the living room like a little maniac. Been hooked ever since.
 
I was born in Hartford and always have been a UCONN Basketball fan. Listening to the team in the mid-sixties and announcers George Erlich, Bob Steele....Arnold Dean...Coach Fred Shabel and that first amazing team that broke Bill Bradley's heart in the NCAA...Tody Kimball....Wonderful Wes, Tom Penders etc....I remember Bill Corley dropping 51 on somebody...perhaps NH? I went to the same High School as Cal Chapman....remember him scoring 30 and us almost upsetting the "Dream Team" from Hawaii....led by HPHS star Bob Nash...Tony Hanson, Corny Thompson/Mike McKay/Chuck Alexsinas...Uncle Cliff...Chris Smith, The Dove...so many stars after those first groups...Tate at the buzzer against Clemson, Donyell, Ray and the 1999, 2004, 2011, 2014, 2023 and our current heroes. I never imagined growing up in the sixties that we would come to dominate the way we do now....it's been an amazing ride as a UCONN fan for over sixty years. I feel very lucky to have witnessed so many magical minutes of basketball.
 
As a 10 year paperboy who daily devoured the * World news and sports page . A team named Connecticut was making news. Since I lived in Connecticut it was pretty cool having a real home team to follow .Names like Worthy Patterson and Art Quimby joined my list of sports heroes.
But it wasn’t until the next year after my older brother joined the Marines and I inherited his radio that I discovered i could listen to a game . . That was 70 years ago .
On Saturday my son and I met a boyhood friend of his , at the FF , that he hadn’t seen since 8th grade .
His friend reminded me I took them to a UConn game in 1979-80 in New Haven . He mentioned they’ve come a long way.
* The Korean War had recently concluded an event that was huge in my world
 
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AZHuskiePop said:
As a 10 year paperboy who daily devoured the * World news and sports page . A team named Connecticut was making news. Since I lived in Connecticut it was pretty cool having a real home team to follow .Names like Worthy Patterson and Art Quimby joined my list of sports heroes.
But it wasn’t until the next year after my older brother joined the Marines and I inherited his radio that I discovered i could listen to a game . . That was 70 years ago .
On Saturday my son and I met a boyhood friend of his , at the FF , that he hadn’t seen since 8th grade .
His friend reminded me I took them to a UConn game in 1979-80 in New Haven . He mentioned they’ve come a long way.
* The Korean War had recently concluded an event that was huge in my world
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Like you, I became a UConn basketball fan in the mid-50's. It is hard to fathom the time that has passed since then. When we recall those days to young people today, it is the equivalent of some old-timer in 1954 recalling events that happened in the 1880's. To our listeners it is ancient history. To us, it was just yesterday. I can recite from memory the entire rosters of those great Art Quimby teams: Worthy Patterson, Stan Zima, Ron Bushwell, Gordon Ruddy, Jim Ahern, Don Burns, Fran Quinn, Bobby Osborn, Marco Malone, Bob Dube and on and on.
 
I grew up in Stamford. During the 60's I use to think Nelson Rockefeller ran the state of Connecticut since we could not pickup any CT TV stations. When UCONN with Toby Kimball played Duke there was just no amount of tin foil on the rabbit ears that could bring in the game since Channel 8 was it. My earliest recollection of Storrs was in 1961 when my little High School played Bloomfield High in a quarter final game Class S basketball game in a facility on Campus that had a dirt floor. When I walked in I was thinking they could have a rodeo here. Brother and sister both graduated from there and then my daughter. The hat icon I use is the most expensive hat I own due to the tuition payments. Well Worth it though, I worked a lot of OT to Pay for my Daughter's back in the early 2000's. Can't imagine trying to do it now.
 
Grew up a Yale fan in New Haven in the 50s and 60s. Rooted for them to beat UConn in basketball and football when I was a rope guard and usher at Yale Bowl and the Payne-Whitney Gymnasium.
Became a UConn fan in 1964 when I made the decision to attend UConn…
 
Dream season here too. I remember watching the elite eight game at G Fox in a mall and was reduced to tears after Laettner hit the last second shot to end the season. It was then that my hatred for Duke was born.
 
Started listening to the Huskies around 1960-1961 on WTIC radio. They were not on TV. I believe George Erlic was the radio voice.
Got hooked then. First live game at Field House in 1964.
Started at Uconn 1966. Avid fan ever since as is my son 1999 Uconn graduate.
I have been to every Big East tourney, except the one in Syracuse.
My son has carried on the tradition. lLooking forward to the next NC.
Go Huskies!
 
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Born a UConn fan. Went to Field House games in the 70's. Lived in the Frat Quad. Not many guys from my dorm went to the games. Different time, I guess. Used to be able to just walk in at game time.
 
When I graduated HS in 1972, like a lot of my friends I applied to UConn as my safety school. I got in, but decided to go to Jacksonville U in FL (the year after Artis Gilmore played there).

Their hoops was still good, but the school and city was disappointing. I transferred to Ithaca college and graduated in 1976. I came home to CT and starated grad school at UNH
(ok here comes the UConn part).

1978 my brother graduates HS and enrolls in UConn. At his Christmas break he was talking up Uconn basketball, Dom Perno years, Corny Thompson, Mike McKay. We started watching games and I was hooked.
When we got Chuck Aleksinas from Kentucky we thought we would be unbeatable. We saw that although Dom was a nice guy and bled blue, but he saw the game from a guards standpoint. Nothing seemed to run through Chuck.
So we held on through the rest of the Perno years and had a ringside seat to the start of the Calhoun era. It has been a wild ride and we are not done yet.
 
Alum, graduated 1980. My guys were Tony Hansen, Jim Abromaitis and Corny Thompson LOL. Had seasons tickets for 30 years until moving to Seattle. Saw them all from Yankee Conference with Dee Rowe and Dom Perno through Coach Calhoun then watched from afar after 2002. Uncle Cliffy, Chris Smith, Ray Ray, Rip, Caron, the Marshall Bros, Khalid, Kevin Freeman, Emeka, Ben Gordon. All legends back then and more coming before our eyes... .Huskies til I die!
 
Grew up in New Canaan in mid1970s. Parents said they would pay for UConn, or I could pay for the private schools my friends went to. UConn was the easy choice. In those days the big sport was soccer, we would have several thousand people and a few kegs at a good game. Went to most of those games and a few basketball games.
 
Growing up in Connecticut in the 80s they were always “background noise” to me as I was primarily a baseball fan, but the first season I really got into the Huskies was that 93-94 team, with all-world Donyell and the two great freshmen, Ray and Doron.

Huskymania swept the state that year. I still remember my seventh grade teacher wheeling in a television so the class could watch the first round tournament game against Rider! And of course, later on in the tourney I was heartbroken as Donyell missed the free throws.

Ray Allen was my favorite player, and I kept a spiral notebook with clipped photos of Ray from the Waterbury Republican-American, as well as a game log. Before the internet, that was the only way to chart how a player’s season went, as the newspapers would only post cumulative or average stats. I wish I still had that notebook, as I heard he turned out to be a pretty good player.
 
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I grew up in New Hartford and my dad was a huge fan. I started to get interested during the 95-96 season as an eight year old who thought Ray, Iverson, and Kerry Kittles were the three coolest dudes playing ball. I remember my dad and I going crazy over Ray’s shot in the BET and have been hooked ever since. Around that time my mom picked up a “Basketball the Jim Calhoun Way” VHS at the local IGA and I would go out in the driveway and shoot free throws just as Coach Calhoun instructed.

When we won in 1999 I was over the moon for months but as a kid I didn’t quite grasp the long struggle that led up to the breakthrough. Thank you to everyone for sharing their story and I love reading the experiences of the people who had decades of fandom before the first natty. It really puts into perspective just how amazing the UConn fan experience is.
 
Gotta say I am blown away by the OG fans on here representing the pre-Calhoun era.

I got into March Madness in 1985 as a 9 year old kid with a basketball hoop in his basement growing up in Stamford, CT but UConn wasn't on my map till Huskymania swept the state in the early 90s.

This leveled up fully in 95 as a Freshman at Storrs watching this absolute superstar named Ray Allen in the flesh at Gample.

Then a lifelong obsession was kicked off watching us shock the world at Storrs as a senior In 99.

Been watching damn near every game since, even the bad ones.

What a ride!
 
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