World Cup invites all types of life

Javier Cortez, Sports Editor • June 24, 2014

Soccer does not see race, gender, social class or language. Anyone can try to play it and everyone can certainly watch it. Charlie Gibbens, director of housing at UTEP, has been trying to create that sense of inclusion over the past two weeks.

The timing couldn’t have been better considering the fact that the two largest groups of international students are from Mexico and Brazil, which happen to be two countries that have unrivaled passion for their national teams.

“We have a large delegation of international students this year,” Gibbons said. “The two largest populations we have a from Brazil and Mexico, so we did host a viewing party when Mexico played Brazil and it was a lot of fun.”

The Brazil-Mexico game on June 17, to no surprise, pulled the largest crowd and was by far the loudest. Junior social work major Janelle Contreras described the atmosphere as crazy.

“Here, it is dominant with Brazilians,” Contreras said. “They’re jumping up, going crazy–it gives me goose bumps and I’m not even from there. You had people with their jerseys and flags and it was a cool atmosphere.”

Since the start of the World Cup back on June 12, Gibbons and some of the Brazilian and Mexican students have put together quite the gathering at Summit Hall in Miner Village. Big- screen TVs, amped soccer fans and free food have been the norm over the past two weeks.

Summit Hall, was divided into two groups— on one side you had the Mexican students wearing their red, white and green, and on the other side are the Brazilian students in their yellow, green and blue.

Each side was equally loud and passionate about their teams. Considering the fact that Mexico and Brazil are the top two teams in their group is a plus, and the overall mood of the room was joyous and very boisterous.

Senior engineering major, Carla Eduarda Orlando is one of the many Brazilians who attended the viewing parties and she plans on attending all the parties with games featuring Brazil. Orlando is from Curitiba, Brazil, which is the eighth most populous city in Brazil, located in the south of the country.

Orlando likes the atmosphere in Summit Hall, but says nothing compares to soccer back in Brazil.

“It’s really nice watching the game here,” Orlando said. “There are a lot of Brazilians, so we enjoy the game and have a good time. But soccer here is not like soccer in Brazil. In Brazil everyone loves soccer.”

Gibbons said he has seen the outpouring of Soccer fans in the past few weeks and sees no reason to not keep it going.

“A lot of our programming that happens is driven by our students,” Gibbons said. “As long as there is interest and it is not interfering with any finals schedules next week, we will keep doing activities like this all summer long.”

Javier Cortez may be reached at [email protected].

About the Contributors

Javier Cortez, Staff Reporter

Javier Cortez is a staff reporter for The Prospector. He is a senior multimedia journalism major, with a minor in English Rhetoric. Javier was born and raised in El Paso, TX and before coming to UTEP in the summer of 2012, he graduated from Irvin High School, where he was a four-year varsity tennis player, a member of student council and a class officer for his graduating class. He has also worked for the El Paso Diablos as a sports information intern on their media relations team. In his spare time, Javier loves to write columns for the perspectives section in the school newspaper—whether it is sports, pop culture, religion, and society he loves to write about it. To go along with writing, Javier loves reading anything about sports, religion, and non-fiction.

Amanda Guillen, Editor-in-Chief

Amanda Guillen is a senior multimedia journalism major with a minor in women's studies. She was born and raised in El Paso, Texas and graduated from El Paso High School in 2011. She has been a part of The Prospector since summer 2013 and is currently Managing Editor. She has always had a passion for journalism and plans to become a television news reporter upon graduating from UTEP. In addition to being a full-time student and reporter, she is a part of two honor societies on campus, Alpha Lambda Delta and the National Society of Leadership and Success where she participates in community service regularly. Amanda also interns for KVIA Channel 7 the El Paso affiliate of ABC. Her love for the city of El Paso is something that led her to choose UTEP as her school of choice. She has enjoyed her past 3 years at the university and looks forward to an eventful school year.

Michaela Roman, Editor-in-Chief

Michaela is a Senior Digital Media Production major at The University of Texas at El Paso. As the Editor-in-Chief, and former Photo Editor of The Prospector, she has learned to stay organized, manage a staff of writers and photographers, meet deadlines, cover events and network with others. She also has freelance experience and a personal photography business. Michaela aspires to work as an editor for a large media outlet and one day go to graduate school to teach photojournalism.