{"id":8430,"date":"2015-09-26T07:56:26","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T13:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=8430"},"modified":"2015-09-28T10:29:13","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T16:29:13","slug":"with-recycled-trailer-tailgating-comes-to-rocky-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/09\/with-recycled-trailer-tailgating-comes-to-rocky-soccer\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycled trailer brings tailgating to Rocky soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Van\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Rocky Mountain College soccer moms (front to back) Beth Morris, Michelle Luce and Tami Sherwood stand alongside the new Bear Den, tailgating headquarters for Rocky fans.<\/p><\/div>\n

What do you think you\u2019d do with an aging 24-foot double-wheel travel trailer traded in for the latest, greatest model on the lot? Wreck it, I hear you<\/em> say, but not Dave and Michelle Luce. Michelle saw something beautiful and functional in this old cast-off.<\/p>\n

Their son, Donovan Luce, is a freshman at Rocky Mountain College and plays on the men\u2019s soccer team. Dave and Michelle, who have watched just about every one of his games from age 8 through high school and club career, were gearing up for a different experience at college games\u2014tailgating!<\/p>\n

Instead, what they discovered was that college soccer has not taken up the tailgating tradition in any big way, if at all, and so at the first couple of games they attend it was a barren landscape, functional but just not socially appetizing. There was no sign of trailers and tents, barbecues and cook-outs, not even a refreshment kiosk.<\/p>\n

And then, viola! Michelle spied the soon-to-be scrapped trailer on the lot of Dave\u2019s car dealership, and in her mind\u2019s eye she saw it, an epiphany around the tailgate vacuum: that trailer would become the Rocky Mountain College soccer game-day \u201cBear Den.\u201d And with they would initiate, for the first time on the Rocky campus, a tailgate party.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>But this was not to be just any run-of-the-mill trailer. No, not if you\u2019re Michelle Luce. It was to be a luxury abode akin to the New York Hilton, the London Savoy, or Hotel Ares Paris. This was to be not just a place where at every home game players, families, fans and spectators could come and relax before and after the games, but a showcase of interior artistic design around the Rocky Mountain College Bears motif.<\/p>\n

It was to be a place where, after a grueling game, exhausted players would be able to come and collapse on seats of gold and green, rest their heads on \u201cRMC\u201d-embroidered cushions. Even the bathroom seat and trash cans would be green and embellished with the RMC Bear\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

\"Den\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Dave and Michelle Luce transformed an aging trailer into this mobile Bear Den.<\/p><\/div>\n

Absolutely no detail was left undone. In fact, many more were introduced once Michelle went into her creative mode, transforming the old and tired looking trailer into an unrecognizable luxury recreational abode for da Bears\u2014RMC Hotel Ares on the Green.<\/p>\n

Dave likewise took up the call to make the Bear Den a welcoming place for socializing before and after soccer games. They wanted a tailgate venue to match any other on campus; food, soft drinks, tacos, salsa, chips and cookies in abundance for all who love the atmosphere game day creates on college campuses.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the generosity of Dave and Michelle, Rocky\u2019s soccer venue promises to be a much livelier place than it has hitherto been: No longer would soccer games be the poor sister to Saturday football. And to strengthen their claim, they\u2019ve found the loveliest spot on Rocky campus, the Rocky Green right at the side of the soccer field.<\/p>\n

Stop by and take a look at what Rocky art professor Jim Baken calls a \u201cmoving work of art and design.\u201d While you\u2019re there, take in the top-notch women and men\u2019s college soccer games. It\u2019s a family atmosphere, and one that is guaranteed to keep building if Dave and Michelle have anything to do with it. I\u2019m thinking, there soon could be cheerleaders and a marching band. So stay tuned for that.<\/p>\n

Paul Roper is a professor in the Health and Human Development Department at Rocky Mountain College and a longtime soccer fan.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Logos\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

The inside of the van is likewise festooned with RMC colors and logos. That’s 11-year-old Andrew\u00a0Luce lounging before the start of Rocky’s Friday-night soccer game.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do you think you\u2019d do with an aging 24-foot double-wheel travel trailer traded in for the latest, greatest model on the lot? Wreck it, I hear you say, but not Dave and Michelle Luce. Michelle saw something beautiful and functional in this old cast-off. Their son, Donovan Luce, is a freshman at Rocky Mountain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":8431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[3149,3150,3151,333],"class_list":["post-8430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversions","tag-dave-and-michelle-luce","tag-donovan-luce","tag-jim-baken","tag-rocky-mountain-college","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}