South Carolina students soak in Gamecocks’ national title with fountain celebration
The subtle cheers in front of the Thomas Cooper Library picked up with each click-clack of flip flops smacking across the pavement.
A quintet of undergrad women raced up Greene Street and past the Longstreet Theater. They sprinted down the steps and toward the fountain tucked in the middle of the University of South Carolina’s downtown Columbia campus.
“Oh s—, oh s—,” one muttered, hoping not to miss that magic moment.
The clock ticked down. Three, two, one.
Half a continent away, the South Carolina women’s basketball team won its second national title with a dominant 64-49 win over UConn in Minneapolis.
Back in Columbia, students poured out of their dorm rooms, study halls and restaurants, jumping into the reflecting pool in front of the library. Cheers rang out. Sirens wailed. One bold onlooker even provided literal fireworks to celebrate the occasion.
“We’ve got class tomorrow,” freshman Drayton Brown quipped. “But we won. It doesn’t really matter. We’re out here wildin’ and being crazy. We just won the national championship.”
The scene oozed of collegiate euphoria. Selfie cameras flashed. Instagram stories were posted. Those exiting the fountain after a few minutes in the knee-deep, chilly water scoured, first, for their shoes and tops, followed by a search for their friends who scattered about in the moments after entering the splashing mass of bodies in the center of campus.
George Bernard, a sophomore from Lexington, was wrapping up an English assignment in the library when a crowd started to congregate. He shut his books, headed down the steps and readied to leap into the icy water awaiting him.
Freshmen Parker Burke and Taylor Moore watched the game from their honors dorm only a football toss from the site of the pandemonium. With the clock inching toward zero and the game nearly secured, they scurried out of their residence hall. Their dorm mates followed suit as the stomping of feet reverberated up and down the stairwell.
Burke and Moore donned ear-to-ear grins as they reached the bushes guarding the entrance to the library. The exhilaration of the moment compounded with the solace of locating the shoes they’d ditched minutes earlier.
“I’ve been a big fan of Carolina’s (women’s) basketball team as long as I can remember,” Moore said. “It’s just great to watch them win this. I’ve been waiting for this forever.”
“Women’s basketball, they did a great job this year,” Burke added. “I think it’s a great experience all the freshmen and new students can experience here.”
The scene slowly devolved into organized chaos. Students poured in from all corners of campus in the immediate 33 minutes after South Carolina secured its title.
One brave, perhaps foolhardy, student climbed a tree on the left side of the library. The shine of police flashlights and cell phone cameras coaxed him down from his perch, where the supervising officers simply asked he not attempt the feat again.
On the opposite end of the pond, sophomore Weston Watts posed for pictures with classmates in a purple speedo, a Greg Norman-style beach hat and a pair of aviators. The Chapin native was a swimmer in high school, he explained. His friend suggested wearing a swimsuit to jump into the fountain. Watts had an idea.
“You should wear a speedo,” he proposed.
“I’m not going to do that,” his friend fired back.
“Well, I’ll do it,” Watts said.
Junior Natty Caldwell and sophomore Evan Mancinelli guided Bmo, Caldwell’s Anatolian shepherd, out of the reflecting pool and back to where both had stashed their shirts just off the steps at the front of the library as the clock crept toward 11 p.m.
Caldwell and Mancinelli were among the first to arrive at the site of celebration an hour earlier. Both jumped into the icy water within seconds of the score going final.
The dog joined in on the fun.
“Honestly, what other school gets to jump in a fountain with everyone else and have the whole campus right here?” Mancinelli posited.
“And with a remix of ‘Sandstorm’ playing,” Caldwell added.
Sixty-five minutes after South Carolina nabbed its second women’s basketball national title, the crowd dissipated. Cheers carried on back toward the dorms surrounding the library, down toward Five Points and off near the Horseshoe.
South Carolina has had eight team national championships to celebrate in its entire athletics history. The women’s basketball team afforded the school its most recent in 2017. It added another to the docket on Sunday night.
Students on campus, quite literally, bathed in the jubilation of another Gamecocks natty.
Oh s—, indeed.
This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 12:58 AM.
