By Paul Letlow, ULMWarhawks.com Online Columnist
MONROE, La. – ULM President Nick Bruno is a numbers guy, so it figures he'd have a key statistic to back up his opening statement at Saturday's Warhawk Women's Event: Football 101.
Noting that ULM's student body is 67 percent female, he said it only makes sense to market the athletics program toward women too.
"We have a great number of women who have come to ULM and go on into professional fields to pursue their careers," Bruno said. "But while they're here, we want them to be more engaged with our athletic program and all the extracurricular activities."
ULM's first foray into a women's football clinic brought nearly 200 supporters to Bayou Pointe for a well-rounded program that provided food, fellowship and football talk. Warhawk Women is a new group designed to augment the Warhawk Club, the chief fund-raising arm for the athletics department.
"We'll provide women who already love this university the chance to become more engaged," co-membership chair Toni Bacon said. "It's our hope that Warhawk Women will give our alumni and our friends the opportunity to network with other accomplished women in order to create a collaborative voice in support of ULM Warhawk Athletics."
The program featured breakout sessions with the offensive and defensive staffs, where attendees learned about "RPOs" and the "buck" position. They finished with a football fashion show featuring the hottest ULM gear available for games this fall.
Before that though, attendees heard from head coach
Matt Viator and his wife Schantel. They met while he was coaching high school football and she was the cheerleader sponsor.
"When I met Matt 22 years ago, I knew nothing (about football)," Schantel Viator said. "I'd been a cheerleader and I'd been a cheerleader sponsor. When I met him, all I knew was, when we have the ball we do this side of the chant list. If they have the ball, we do this side of the chant list. That was it."
But over the past two decades, ULM's first lady of football has soaked up plenty of knowledge about the game.
"Over the years, asking questions like, 'Why are going for two points now? Why didn't you do that in the first quarter?" she said. "He started explaining things. The more I knew, the more exciting the game got and the more I wanted to know."
The question and answer session, moderated by Associate Athletics Director for Communications and Marketing
John Lewandowski, revealed a personal side of the Viators.
-- They have a 90-pound standard poodle named Amos who accompanies the coach on his walks around campus.
"He loves to come up here and he loves to run on the field," Viator said. "He's about 90 pounds. Every night when I come home, he's got that big head in the window. He goes berserk when I pull up."
-- Viator loves cheeseburgers.
"They have some good ones in Monroe," he said. "I just love hamburgers."
-- If he weren't a coach, he's not sure what profession he'd choose.
"The only show I watch is 'Law and Order,' so maybe something to do with that," he said.
Schantel said she figures he'd be a groundskeeper on a golf course.
"He absolutely loves a golf course and admiring grass," she said. "I think he'd like to work on one."
-- Viator enjoys a variety of music genres but leans toward classic rock.
"Those were my college days in the early '80s, so I listen to the '80s channel," he said.
