Program Provides Football Tickets to City Youths

Well if Harvard students aren’t going to fill the stands, Aaron Byrd and Jonathan Ardrey plan to find someone who will.

Disappointed by sparse attendance at Harvard Stadium in games past, the juniors have co-founded “The Spectacle of Soul Project,” a non-profit organization that will provide excess football tickets to underprivileged children living in Boston’s inner-city.

Byrd—a representative on the Undergraduate Council and formerly a cornerback on the gridiron prior to surgery to correct a debilitating back ailment—first conceived of the idea while taking in a game last autumn.

“This past fall, for the first time since I’ve been at Harvard, I was sidelined because of injury,” Byrd said. “And I was looking up in the stands, and there’s no one there.”

While the athletic department has struggled to lure students from the College across the river, the duo hopes to corral the collective power of Harvard’s mentoring programs, providing an inexpensive bonding opportunity for tutors and their students.

“For us this is merely the first step,” Ardrey said. “This is a system we thought should have been in place from the very beginning. Helping Harvard become more involved with inner-city young people and supporting the mentor program was just logical.”

According to Byrd, a limited number of tickets is already distributed through a program with the Boston Parks and Recreation Department. But after winning the endorsement of football captain Ryan Fitzpatrick and the leaders of several other high-profile teams, the organization had little difficulty convincing Director of Marketing Kristi O’Connor of the project’s viability and upside.

Though O’Connor rejected the group’s initial proposal—Byrd and Ardrey had requested 1,000 tickets for all five home contests next season, including the season finale against Yale—Spectacle will receive 1,200 tickets for every game other than The Game, concentrated in a section that has yet to be determined.

“We just want to have fans,” Byrd said, “at least a whole section full of crazy fans who are happy to be there.”

Though the formal decision has not yet been made, Byrd confessed that he is angling for seats behind the goalposts at the stadium’s closed end.

Rather than attempt to create an entirely new network for distribution, the tandem will be working in close contact with Phillips Brooks House and organizations like City Step to spread its message to potential ticket recipients. From there, a website currently under construction would allow those interested to reserve tickets ahead of schedule for both themselves and their expected guests.

“Everybody we’ve walked up to,” Ardrey said, “everyone says, ‘We’re excited about it. Please keep us updated, it’s something they want to participate in.’”

Given football’s early start relative to the beginning of the school year, expectations for the first contest are limited, but Byrd hopes for close to full distribution at Harvard’s second home game, held four weeks into the season against Cornell on Oct. 9.

“We’re aiming for 900 to 1,100 kids at the second game,” Byrd said. “The first one will be tough because everyone will just be coming back. The programs will just be getting started.”

Then, of course, there is the question of transporting that many students from their homes to the athletic fields in Allston.

“We’re definitely going to use the PBH vans, and I think we’ll end up subsidizing a few subway passes,” Byrd said. “They already have reduced fares in Boston, but I think we can work out something with [the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority] for free field trips.”

The expectation is that football season will amount to a trial run for a system Byrd and Ardrey would like to see expand to include other sports come winter.

“We had talked about events like hockey games during the week, lacrosse games, women’s volleyball and definitely basketball,” Byrd said. “It’ll be event-to-event in those sports. [O’Connor] made it pretty clear that as long as tickets were available we’d have first rights to them.”

But the program’s potential extends beyond sporting events, and Spectacle will likely look to tap into Harvard’s arts programs as well.

“One of the things we’re building is steering committee for student representatives among prominent community service organizations,” said Ardrey, who also co-directed Eleganza. “It’s about where they’d like it go—a cappella, choral music, plays. There’s so much going on at this campus.”

The program kicks off Sept. 18, when the Crimson welcomes Holy Cross in the season opener.

“All these kids rubbing shoulders with the old Harvard fans,” Byrd said. “It’ll be interesting.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.