Virtual Athletics Tour: Bringing Bates Bobcats to You!

With potential future Bobcats unable to tour campus with Bates coaches due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bates community came together to create a virtual athletics facilities tour.

Bobcat women's rower Lillian Kinder '22 (Pike, N.H.) and men's lacrosse player Navaar Naimie '23 (Cape Neddick, Maine) made the trip to campus in late July to play the role of "tour guides" for the production. Assistant Sports Information Director Aaron Morse wrote the script and filmed Kinder and Naimie all over campus, with colleague Theophil Syslo in charge of audio.

"I wanted to host the virtual tour as a way of showing all prospective students the incredible community of Bates athletics," Kinder said. "Bates athletics is an extremely important part of my college experience and I am so grateful for the phenomenal coaches and staff."

"Being given an opportunity to bring exposure to this great school and represent my team was an honor I could not pass up," said Naimie. 

Initially, some of the athletics facilities weren't ready for "primetime" as a few had not been used for more than a year due to the cancellation of spring sports.

Thanks to the outstanding work of Grounds and Maintenance Manager John Griffiths and his team, that soon changed. They prepared the athletics fields as if there were games scheduled that day.

Morse and Digital Media Studios Manager Michelle Holbrook-Pronovost were able to get breathtaking drone shots of the facilities, helping viewers get a bird's eye view of campus. Video highlights along with the student-athletes' narration and a few dips into the Muskie Archives combine to give prospective student-athletes and curious alumni a look at Bates' athletics facilities they may not have seen before.

The tour guides learned a few things themselves about Bates during the production process. 

"I learned that the school has a large historical presence which I did not know beforehand," Naimie said. "It's wild to think that fields like Garcelon Field can be so well maintained yet be over 100 years old at its foundation."

"One of my favorite parts of being involved with this video was learning about each program's outstanding accomplishments," Kinder said. "There are too many important accomplishments to list and I loved to learn about each of them because it truly speaks to the hard work and dedication of all of the athletes and programs at Bates."