Land of 50 Schools, #3: Macalester
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David: Hi again! We’re back. Welcome back to our quest to see a sporting event at every college and university in the state of Minnesota.
One minor procedural note that we should mention: this is apparently The Land of 50 Schools now. Unfortunately, Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College up in Cloquet discontinued their athletics program at the close of the 2023 academic year. We’ve reached out to see if there’s any hope of Thunder basketball coming back to the Northland, but at this time, it appears we’re down one.
Third on our journey is another local darling—very local, to me. We’re headed into suburban Saint Paul once more to visit Macalester College, a member of the Division III Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC)—same as St. Thomas, up until the latter were removed from the conference for being a little too good, too big, too everything.
Macalester has never really had that issue—for about thirty years, they held a record for the longest football losing streak at 50 games, and while other sports have generally fared slightly better than those, it’s still been a long and arduous road for the Scots, more known for their academic prowess and selective nature than any sort of sporting dominance.
Still, they’re in a great location, playing another Minnesota team, and it was a Tuesday night with not much else going on. Why not go see a basketball game!
The Matchup
MACALESTER Scots (1-3, 0-0 MIAC) vs. NORTHWESTERN (MN) Eagles (1-2, 0-0 UMAC)
Sport: Men’s basketball
Date: Tuesday, November 19, 2024 — 19:00
Venue: Leonard Center | St. Paul (capacity 1,200)
Attendance: 472 (39.3%), though how exactly they calculated this, I1 have no idea…we’ll get to that soon enough
The Campus
David: Macalester is one of the namesakes of the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood, one of Saint Paul’s officially recognized divisions—though honestly, there’s very little differentiating it from Highland Park, home of St. Thomas. Quaint streets filled with houses that are ninety, a hundred years old, most of which are occupied by pretty average folks just getting by. The most notable feature of the neighborhood is likely the row of Victorian-era mansions that line Summit Avenue—but for our study of the location, all I can say is that this part of Saint Paul feels the most, to me, like an actual college town.
Right along Snelling Avenue (a state highway), it’s incredibly easy to get to from pretty much any angle you take it—it really just comes down to timeliness versus scenery—but any way you want to shake it, it’s a truly lovely place to take in a game, with tree-lined streets in the late days of fall, golden leaves dotting the sidewalks and the first signs of winter frost nipping away at your breath. It’s nearly perfect.2
The Venue
Eli: Calling the Leonard Center simply a basketball arena would be drastically underselling it. Completed in 2008, the Leonard Center is the heart of athletics for all of Macalester. The two-story complex includes a giant fitness center, a fieldhouse with a full-sized track and several racquet-sport courts, two lobbies (one on each floor) sprinkled with ping pong tables, a health and wellness center, and a juice bar.
But the crown jewels of the Leonard Center are its two primary intercollegiate athletic facilities: the natatorium—which hosts swimming and diving—and, yes, the 1,200-seat gym.
Personally, I love pretty much everything about this gym. First and foremost, it’s exceedingly nice for a Division III facility. A lot of that is because it’s less than 20 years old, but just as much of it is because the school went above and beyond to give it a unique flair and cozy atmosphere that are likely to work just as well in 2044 as they do today.
The railing separating the walkways from the seating area has the letter M etched into the pattern, a small but immediately noticeable detail that makes the place feel like home from the moment you walk in. Hanging from that railing on the far side are nine national flags that, best I can tell, have some correlation to the players’ ethnic heritage.3 The humongous, block-letter MAC in the far corner gives off an unmistakably amateur, almost high school vibe that pays homage to the best parts of lower-level collegiate athletics. The banners for all of the MIAC teams on the far wall certainly help.
The scoreboard looks anachronistic here, and that’s because it is. It and the less-detailed scoreboard on the opposite wall were both recycled from Macalester’s previous facility. It still seems to work just fine.
The wooden “Home of the Scots” pattern behind it isn’t real, though; I checked.
From the near-side walkway, you can peer through a large window into the natatorium. It looked to be a bit of a mess at this time, but it’s clearly a high-class facility.
All in all, this is about as good as you could reasonably expect for Division III. I’ve been to Division I power conference facilities, plural, that are far less appealing than the Leonard Center.
The Experience
Eli: Before the game even started, my experience was unlike anything that’s ever happened to me at an organized sporting event.
David and I drove to this game in separate vehicles and I arrived before him. I parked on St. Clair Avenue and walked toward the Leonard Center from the south, entering the building at an unmarked entrance behind a student who I think assumed I was also a student. The first thing I did was look for a bathroom, and in doing so, I almost accidentally walked directly into the Northwestern locker room. As I was a few steps away from the door, an assistant coach exited and walked past me, smiling like nothing was amiss.
After I found the real bathroom, I still had some time to kill before David arrived, so I explored a little. I was on the lower level of the facility, the floor with the fitness center and the (then-closed) juice bar. Several board games rested on a counter near the bar.
I considered playing solo Yahtzee until David got there, but then I noticed the fitness center didn’t appear to require any sort of key to access, so I just acted like I was supposed to be there and started power walking on a treadmill.
It was around this time that I remembered that I hadn’t paid anything to enter the building. So I just walked in place, lost in thought, half humored that I got away with something, half worried that I might somehow get banned from a local Division III basketball arena.
Then David showed up and entered the building the correct way and he didn’t have to pay anything either. Admission to Macalester basketball games is free.
David: One of these days, this series is going to give us a normal game of basketball, but it was not this episode.
From the jump, we had two very different stories. Macalester was playing with a lid on their basket—missing threes, missing gimmes, it did not matter, and Northwestern was responding by hitting trick shots and stunting on them—only somewhat metaphorically.
Last year we noted during our visit to St. Thomas that they played a very high-risk, high-reward style of offense, reliant very heavily on the three—both teams tonight played similarly, making me curious if that’s the hallmark of Upper Midwest college basketball these days. Macalester, unlike St. Thomas, simply could not generate any sort of push to their offense, though, and it would prove to be their undoing. In the first half alone, we must have seen ten, fifteen possessions squandered by a dribble into the post where the ball was either 1) held for twenty seconds before a layup was missed, 2) kicked out to be passed around like that one Mario Party game with the Bob-omb, or 3) kicked out for a three to sail over the rim. Such efficiency was astounding, and led us to the half, where Mac was trailing by nearly 25 points.
Eli: We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the halftime entertainment: they just pulled some students out of the student section and had them play tug of war.
The winners got free Macalester swag, though they didn’t seem too hesitant to give some to the losers either. 10/10, no notes.4 I wish the University of Minnesota let their students participate in the interstitial entertainment to even a quarter of this extent while I was a student.
Also during the halftime break, I explored the upper level of the Leonard Center, which is where you’re supposed to enter if you’re not a student. It really is beautiful.
I meant to try some of the concession offerings but they were pretty barebones. No hot food and nothing you couldn’t find anywhere else.
For how much I’ve praised the rest of the Leonard Center, I must admit that my public high school in South Dakota had superior nourishment options. That said, it seemed apparent that bringing outside food into the gym was allowed, as we noticed meals from a few nearby restaurants being enjoyed in the bleachers. That’ll be the play if and when we return.
I had some time before the second half began, so I checked out the fieldhouse across the walkway from the gym. Immediately upon entry, I was greeted by a racquetball court; I couldn’t tell you the last time I’d seen one of those.
A basketball was sitting on the track, so I picked it up and dribbled as I ran a few laps.
Two words: good vibes.
David: Mac turned things around in the latter half of the game—shots were falling, the defense warmed up, and some pretty electric back-and-forths got the crowd pumped and loaded.
But ultimately the comeback wasn’t fated to be, and a game that never got any closer than three points finished just shy of ten to the visitors in the end.
The Takeaway
Eli: Experiences like this can’t help but make me wonder “what if?”. What if I’d grown up local to the Twin Cities and naturally gone to more events like this instead of having season tickets to the Sioux Falls Skyforce? What if I’d gone to a smaller college instead of being dead set on studying at large state schools? How would my relationship with sports be different?
When it comes down to it, at the D3 level, sport is nothing more than a natural extension of community. On the player side, everyone involved understands that participation is done almost entirely for love of the game. Division III schools are disallowed from offering athletic scholarships. MIAC players aren’t brokering multi-million-dollar NIL deals. On the spectator side, everyone involved seems to revel in that fact—that all of the players are just community members who happen to be somewhat more athletic. The fans want their team to win the game, but more than that, they want the players to succeed. There’s a distinct acceptance of the players as human beings that you hardly see at any level higher than this one.
Macalester takes that vibe and magnifies it to the greatest degree. “This sport belongs to you”, they say, “come on in; admission is free! Bring in whatever food you like! We’re all here to break bread with our friends and family. Here, have some merch to support the squad!” It seems ridiculous to anyone whose experience with spectator sports primarily (or even entirely) amounts to paying large entities lots of money to watch people they don’t know play the game like superhumans. But it really shouldn’t be. Sports would be a lot more of a net positive for society if this experience was more universal.
Final Thoughts
David: I think Eli said a lot of it pretty beautifully—more than just about anybody, and certainly most of any of the places we’ve visited, Macalester embodies the idea of sports for all. They’re still trying to win, obviously, it’s not like Eli and I were tossed jerseys and told to suit up,5 but at no point did I ever feel like any point of this experience was designed to exclude anybody—from the price point, to the lax rules about entry and food, to the audience involvement.
I applied to Macalester when I was looking at schools. They wound up saying no right around when I was already pretty well decided on Pepperdine, and though I don’t regret much of anything regarding how my life has gone in the ensuing years, this is a lens into the kind of experience and culture that I could have surrounded myself with during those formative years. It’s strange, missing something you never actually experienced, but that’s the power of moments like this.
Either way, I’ll be back here. Maybe next time, I’ll see the Scots win one.
NORTHWESTERN (MN) 82
Macalester 73
Eli
Editor’s note: It’s been negative degrees Fahrenheit for most of the week as I get this piece ready for publication in mid-January. —Eli
The Scots roster includes one player born in Türkiye and another born in Nigeria, both of which are represented, but I couldn’t discern a direct correlation for any of the other six non-US flags. I also checked the rosters for the other teams that play in this gym (women’s basketball and volleyball) and neither of them have any international players at all, so I’m drawing a blank.
One note from David: next time, we are so asking for swag.
Editor’s note: a few years ago, I was at a rec league softball tournament my friend was playing in and one of their players got badly injured, so they called me in from the stands to replace him. I still don’t think that was legal within the tournament rules, but there is precedent! —Eli