Matthew Denicourt had been on campus only a few days and already he was a marked man. He was the Cageball man, the kid with the trading card all the other freshmen needed.
It was Tuesday, and Denicourt and his 690 classmates had just one more day to finagle their way into complete sets of 50 campus trading cards, the latest ploy to help new students get to know Worcester Polytechnic Institute - and each other - quickly.It's orientation time for incoming freshmen and transfer students at colleges nationwide. And schools are trying to keep their introductions interesting, mixing cookouts with community service, discussion groups with square dances.
Or scavenger hunts. Human bingo. Even a giant game or two of Twister.
But at WPI, the craze is cards.
Each student received a set of 50 cards. That is, 50 of the same card; the same picture on the front, the same information on the back. The idea is to trade off with other students to complete the set of 24 professors, 14 buildings and 12 WPI traditions.
Assistant Dean Chris Jachi-mo-wicz and other school officials had toyed with using a more high-tech approach to break the ice, but they figured the trading cards would force the math and science whiz kids attracted to the school to mingle a little more.
Jachimowicz grew up trading cards. A friend's father had been a security guard at Topps Co. in Brooklyn and often brought home odd packs of cards and bubble gum for the boys.
He never really got into collecting the sports cards but still has complete sets from some 1970s television shows, like "Welcome Back, Kotter" and "The Six Million Dollar Man." The pride of his collection, though, is a set from the 1968 movie "Planet of the Apes."
So when Jachimowicz took charge of the new student orientation, the trading card format seemed a natural fit.
"There is a lot of information the students need in the first few weeks," he said. "The people who have the information they need? They need to know what they look like. The buildings? There they are."
The cards really took off, too.
Within minutes of their distribution, about 200 students huddled in a parking lot for some frenzied trading that at one point blocked traffic. By early afternoon, some students needed just one more card.
Denicourt's card.
"At first it was really cool. People would swarm me," the 18-year-old from Johnston, R.I., said while waiting in line to sign up for classes. "I got like 30 cards for one Cageball.
"Now, though, it's like people hate me. They say, `Hey, he's the guy with all the Cageball."'
Cageball, for those who either didn't attend WPI or haven't seen the trading card, caught on here in the 1930s and pits teams of 50 against each other in a pushing match over an 8-foot-wide leather ball.