Men's Soccer | 11/30/2016 11:49:00 AM

STATESBORO – In a continuing effort to raise funds to help pay for a trip to Germany this spring to train and learn more about the game, as well as in an effort to increase support for the Georgia Southern women's and men's soccer programs, Georgia Southern men's soccer will be selling GATA FC scarves at Saturday's home football game against Troy.

The Eagle men will be selling the scarves between the Blue Lot (tailgate and parking) and the Gene Bishop Building located on the west end zone of the football stadium. The scarves will be $25 with proceeds from Saturday going towards the men's trip to Germany this spring break. The role and money raised from the scarves will eventually go to benefit both soccer programs. At this time, only cash and checks will be accepted on Saturday.

"The scarves are representative of the worldwide culture of soccer," said head men's soccer coach John Murphy. "Soccer supporters all across the world have scarves for their teams. They are the colors of the program and fans wear them to the games and wave them over their heads. It's very symbolic in the soccer community. Obviously with the acronym GATA meaning so much to those associated with Georgia Southern, we wanted to build on that. Everywhere we've been recently, after introducing these late in the season, people want to know how they can get a scarf, so we'll be selling them between the tailgate parking lot and the football stadium at the Troy game and we appreciate everybody's support.

"We've produced these scarves and are using them as a fundraiser for our trip to Germany in March right now," Murphy continued. "It will be a unique opportunity for our student-athletes to go overseas and compete internationally and do some site seeing as well as some cultural development. We're also going to be running a youth clinic on a US Army base and have an opportunity to go to adidas international headquarters. We're looking to build on a few things that we have been working on here and the proceeds from these scarves are going to go directly towards that trip and helping our men grow."

During the 2016 season, the men's soccer program began GATA FC in an effort to boost support for both the men's and women's teams. Similar to the Hanner Hooligans for basketball, Hanner Hectics for volleyball and Clements Crazies for baseball, GATA FC (GATA Futbol Club) is meant to be a support group for the women's and men's soccer programs. Both Murphy and head women's soccer coach Brian Dunleavy want to build up the excitement around their programs heading into the future.

"(GATA FC) came about from an effort of us trying to get more people on campus and in Statesboro more interested about soccer on campus, not just men's soccer but the women as well," Murphy said. "It's for both programs and that's what makes soccer unique, it's a sport that is played world-wide and can be enjoyed by anybody. It's a unique sport and we're sure there are people on campus that are big soccer supporters and we're trying to get them around our programs to not only increase attendance at the games, but to also increase the energy. We have great energy at all of our sporting events on campus because so many people love Georgia Southern and we want to compliment that and build off of that to develop a good, solid supporters club here on campus that can be a real force and can help our teams at home get victories and represent our school as best we can."

The men's soccer program is coming off of a historic year that saw the Eagles claim the first conference championship in program history. The Eagles went 8-8-3 with two shutouts and wins over North Florida, Georgia State, Hartwick and Appalachian State. The Eagles also played well against powerhouse programs South Carolina and Clemson, taking the Gameocks to overtime.


Georgia Southern Athletics provides up-to-date information on all its sports through its official website, GSEagles.com, through social media channels facebook.com/GSAthletics, twitter.com/GSAthletics, iOS app Georgia Southern Eagles and Android app Eagles GATA. Fans can purchase tickets to Georgia Southern Athletics events by visiting GSEagles.com/Tickets.