Somewhere in the first two rows of the student section, right at center court, you can seemingly always find Alex Horwitch, 22. With his faded green Oregon hat with a yellow O over that year’s Pit Crew shirt, the senior public relations major and three-year president of the basketball student section has been a fixture of Ducks sporting events, from McArthur Court to Matthew Knight Arena. His tenure has seen the rebranding of the group with a new wordmark created by Nike, which then placed it on this season’s student shirt, new track jackets and customized Air Jordan III shoes. But after three full seasons at the helm of the Pit Crew, Horwitch’s last two home basketball games as a student come this week, with Oregon’s game against Utah on Saturday set to be his final home game. @@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Alex%2AC%2AHorwitch@@ @@http://www.goducks.com/SportSelect.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&KEY=&SPID=235&SPSID=4294@@
Horwitch’s position is one he never expected to get in the first place. When he first came to the University — which, after touring the University of Arizona, he chose to attend sight unseen — he planned on attending as many Oregon sporting events as possible. In fact, a University with major-college athletics was atop his academic wish-list, along with a school with a prominent journalism program and one that was far from his hometown of Calabasas, Calif.

****
His first brush with Oregon sports came as a freshman, when he attended the Ducks’ homecoming game against UCLA in 2008. He grew up familiar with big-time college football — his father went to Tulane University and attended football games at the Louisiana Superdome, and his mother went to USC and the family would go to games at the Coliseum — but his experience at Autzen Stadium dwarfed that of what he had seen before, from the moment The Duck rode out onto the field on the back of a Harley-Davidson and he heard the roar of the motorcycle coupled with that of the crowd. @@http://www.goducks.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPSID=3377&SPID=233&DB_OEM_ID=500&KEY=&Q_SEASON=2008@@
What went through Horwitch’s head was simple: “Oh man, this place is loud. This is a lot louder than I expected.”
Despite being an NBA fan and one of the myriad students to follow Oregon’s Holiday Bowl-winning football season that year, he was one of the few to stick through the Ducks’ 8-23 men’s basketball season in 2008-09, which included a 14-game losing streak to start Pac-10 play. Horwitch first saw that year’s team at an open practice at Mac Court after a volleyball game he had attended with his roommate and stuck around long enough afterward to go down to the court, take pictures with then-head coach Ernie Kent and former guard Tajuan Porter, and try and dunk on the baskets. @@http://www.goducks.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPSID=4294&SPID=235&DB_OEM_ID=500&KEY=&Q_SEASON=2008@@
“Yeah, we didn’t come close,” Horwitch says.
On his third day home for winter break, Horwitch realized that his flight back to Eugene from Southern California would be landing just as Oregon would be tipping off against UCLA in Mac Court. He and current roommate Matt Lerman, who lived two doors down the hall in the Living-Learning Center North, ended up on the same plane and devised a plan to get to the arena as soon as possible. @@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/matt%2Alerman@@
Before the pair left on their flight, they were already clad in their game-day gear and ready for the game.
“I’ve got to get to Mac Court. I’ve got to get there as quickly as possible,” Horwitch was thinking.
The moment they landed, they hailed a taxi from the Eugene Airport to their residence hall, threw both sets of their bags in Horwitch’s room and sprinted to Mac Court, getting to the game less than halfway through the first half, red-faced and out of breath. Fortunately for the pair, the student section had thrown chalk into the air before tipoff, and the game was postponed for nearly 20 minutes to clear the powder off the court.
“We only heard people once we got there,” Lerman says. “We were confused why more of the game hadn’t passed yet and we heard the stories of the incident.”
Horwitch would go on to attend every game he was in Eugene for that season, including Oregon’s first Pac-10 win that year, against Stanford on Feb. 21, where students rushed the court to celebrate. Horwitch remembers high-fiving former Oregon center Michael Dunigan, and all of the students on the floor taking part in the team’s postgame huddle. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPID=235&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=3676060@@
“You would have thought that we just won the conference or beat the No. 1 team in the country,” Horwitch says. “We just won. We were just happy that we won.”

****
Persevering through that season had an unforeseen reward for Horwitch. Outgoing Pit Crew President Daniel Cogan contacted him via Facebook before spring break, noting that he saw Horwitch at a lot of games and thought his dedication could be a good thing for the Pit Crew.
“The first thing I thought was that maybe he Facebook-messaged the wrong guy,” Horwitch says. “Completely honestly, I didn’t think this was intended for me.”
After the initial excitement passed, Horwitch met with Cogan a few times before going home and talking it over with his parents. He wanted the opportunity to take the reins, but he was also scared of overcommitting himself.
When he decided to accept Cogan’s offer, he had one thought cross his mind: “OK, you’ve been entrusted this organization that is technically the largest student organization on campus. How are you going to make it better?”
When Horwitch took over, the Pit Crew was entirely reliant upon word of mouth to get students to go to athletic events.
“The job description of the Pit Crew was, ‘Be loud, be good fans.’ That’s wrong. That’s bullshit,” Horwitch says. “You’re a president. You’re not doing anything. If you’re going to have the title of a president or a vice president, do something.”
His first year as president was “trial by error,” especially considering the Ducks’ continued underachievement and holdover policies from previous years. But his second year, when the men’s basketball team split its season between Mac Court and Knight Arena, was when the position started to bear fruit. Horwitch started using social media to generate buzz around Oregon’s teams and started working hand-in-hand with the marketing wing of the athletic department to build a symbiotic relationship. His public relations background showed through in his rebranding of the Pit Crew to coincide with the opening of the new arena. @@http://www.goducks.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPSID=4294&SPID=235&DB_OEM_ID=500&KEY=&Q_SEASON=2010@@
That rebranding effort was vastly helped by the support of Nike designer Todd Van Horne, who collaborated with the Pit Crew to take the student section and make it stand out from every other one in the country. After emailing Van Horne, who mentioned that fellow Nike designer Tinker Hatfield would be joining him, Horwitch went to the Nike campus in Beaverton to discuss what both groups wanted from their partnership.
After Horwitch talked for 10 minutes, Van Horne and Hatfield rattled off a list of ways Nike could help Horwitch execute his vision.
When Hatfield suggested creating a pair of Pit Crew Air Jordans, Horwitch replied by saying, “Yeah, no, that’s fine. I’ll be OK with that. Go for it, I guess.”
Van Horne and Hatfield asked Horwitch to create a wish list of items to outfit the Pit Crew with, which included T-shirts, track jackets, sweatpants, gloves and shoes, some of which have already come to fruition. Van Horne says that being able to outfit the students has helped him connect them with the Oregon brand and to reward them for their dedication to the program. But it was Horwitch’s insight for what he wanted the Pit Crew to be that stands out most to Van Horne.
“We helped him with his vision and gave him some of the resources we have at Nike to make that come to life,” Van Horne says.

****
Although Horwitch’s life outside of the Pit Crew is a busy one — he is a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity and a three-year member of On the Rocks, an all-male a cappella choir — the end of Oregon’s basketball season is going to be the end of a significant portion of his college career.
With his time leading the Pit Crew coming to an end, Horwitch is now looking for the same sort of impressionable freshman or sophomore to take over in his stead.
Legendary Oregon quarterback Joey Harrington — the first president of the Pit Crew — passed on advice as to what he wanted the student section to be.
“I wanted people to have fun. I wanted people to show up. I wanted people to be crazy fans,” Harrington said to Horwitch.
“That’s what the basis was when they founded the organization and that’s what the basis should be into the future” Horwitch says. “Going into the future, it’s finding someone who can look at what myself and my team have been able to do.”