DeLand in March Madness frenzy with Stetson Hatters
March Madness has officially hit DeLand, and the little Volusia County town is all in a frenzy.
Residents, students and fans of Stetson University basketball lined main street Woodland Boulevard in downtown DeLand on Wednesday to usher the Stetson men’s team into its first-ever NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The Hatters, champions of the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament, qualified for the NCAA tourney for the first time in its 53 years of basketball, and the town is super amped. Stetson, founded in 1883, will take on No. 1-seeded and defending national champion UConn at 2:45 p.m. Friday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“The opportunity to compete on a national stage against the defending champion is magical for Stetson University,” Stetson president Christopher Roellke said via email on Wednesday while riding the team bus en route to Daytona Beach International Airport, from where the team and personnel boarded a charter flight to New York City.
“We are so proud of our men’s and women’s teams who have earned automatic qualifiers for the NCAA and WNIT tournaments.”
The Stetson women will open play in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament at 7 p.m. Thursday at Florida International (FIU), in Miami.
“We are taking Stetson from Florida Gem to National Treasure — our strategic plan to 2030 — and this most recent success will accelerate our ascent.”
Athletic director Jeff Altier said the support of the community has been phenomenal, and it was a crazy week on campus after the Hatters men won the A-Sun Tournament title on March 10.
“It is beyond my expectations. The past week has been filled with interviews and arrangements and parties and celebrations. We are on the bus right now,” Altier said in a cell phone conversation. “We just finished going through this parade in downtown DeLand with a lot of people out on the road waving and wishing us the best.
“They sent us off at the Edmunds Center [on campus], and it has been a rush and an incredible week here of fun and enjoyment.”
It is well documented that a small school qualifying for the NCAA Tournament does wonders for enrollment numbers for the following school year. Attention to a university and the influx of applications often multiplies once people begin looking into a school like Stetson. Many of those people will have never heard of the tiny private school until this week.
Stetson has done a record amount of fundraising in each of the past two years, but those numbers are likely to explode with the type of free advertising the school will incur during an event such as March Madness.
“The media attention being afforded to our wonderful small university is unprecedented. We are already seeing a major bump in applications, deposits and future student engagement,” Roellke replied via text message. “This builds beautifully on our record-setting fundraising the last two years — $52 million in 2022 and $65 million in 2023.
“Folks are investing in the Stetson experience in an unprecedented way. Go Hatters!”
Chris Hays covers high school football and college sports, and college football recruiting. He can be found on X @OS_ChrisHays and on Instagram @OS_ChrisHays. He can be reached via email at chays@orlandosentinel.com.
