Wherever the team goes, they are there.

LEWISTON – A purple flag waved in the breeze at the makeshift campsite.

Styrofoam coolers and boxes full of empty bottles were nearby. A grill, still dirty from the day’s barbecuing, was close by. An empty barbecue sauce bottle, uncapped and tipped over. A card table littered with used plastic utensils.

And four college students eased back in their lounge chairs, plastic cups in hand, talking about their upcoming finals.

But the most important piece in this relaxed vignette was the purple flag fluttering above Lyon Carter’s head. It said, “Middlebury.”

Oddly enough, this scene isn’t happening at a local campground. It’s in a parking lot at Bates College.

As the flag suggests, these four college students, all friends and all athletes, aren’t students at Bates. In fact, none of them is from Lewiston. These self-described “tennis super-fans” drove more than five hours from Middlebury, a small college in western Vermont, to watch and cheer on their college’s men’s tennis team. They’re here in Lewiston because the NCAA Division III men’s tennis championships are being played at Bates.

“Fans are so big for this team,” said Carter, of Kingston, Mass. “They seem to thrive on having a lot of fans around, so we came with them.”

“If anyone had told me in high school that I would be a tennis super-fan in college, I would have laughed,” said Mike Hannigan of Greenwich, Conn. “It’s great though. It’s been a blast.”

They said Bates College Security had knocked on the RV’s door around midnight Thursday morning, the night after Middlebury won its first match of the tournament. Security asked what was going on.

“We were all asleep,” Carter said. “I threw on a T-shirt and came to the door. They seemed confused that we were here for the tennis matches, but they were OK with it.”

The team was, of course, OK with the group’s presence. On Thursday, the Middlebury men pulled off one of the bigger upsets in recent years in Division III by knocking off the No. 1-seed and defending national champion, Emory, in a 4-1 match.

Bring on the crowd’

“I play much better with the crowd around me,” said Middlebury’s No. 5 singles player, Justin Ingoglia. “They really were great in supporting us. To have them come all the way down here is just incredible.”

The four guys camping in a RV didn’t start with four. It started with two: Carter and Ryan Cunningham, of Fairfield, Conn.

“It was just the two of us for a while, even at home matches,” said Cunningham. “Some friends started to join us at home, and now look what we have on the road.”

The RV is Carter’s father’s, the parking lot/campground obviously belongs to Bates and the tournament will be won and lost by the members of the tennis team. But for these avid fans, the experience will always be their own.

jpelletier@sunjournal.com

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