Tenting in Duke’s Krzyzewskiville: Will the tradition stay after Coach K’s last game?
.JPG "A Duke student runs her laps around the colorful tent city known as Krzyzewskiville in 2012.")
It was the most competitive tenting season yet for Duke basketball fans, with a record number of students taking the “Krzyzewskiville” entrance exam in hopes of securing a seat in the student section to watch coach Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game as coach Saturday night.
In January, 174 tenting groups — totaling about 2,000 undergraduate students — signed up in less than 24 hours. The top teams earned their spot as one of the 70 blue tents on the grassy field outside Cameron Indoor Stadium, officially dubbed Krzyzewskiville, where they slept for several weeks leading up to this weekend’s historic basketball game against North Carolina.
The decades-old tradition spans generations of Duke fans or “Cameron Crazies.” But this is the last year they pitched the tents to see the legendary coach, who is retiring.
But while its namesake is leaving Duke, Krzyzewskiville is here to stay.
And so is the name.
“Everyone knows that it’s a tradition and the demand is still going to be there,” said Duke senior Dan Behrens, co-vice president of tenting. “I don’t see why they would stop doing it.”
‘A school culture thing’
The tradition is bigger than Coach K and the game itself.
Tenting brings people together. It’s a commonality for math majors, sports writers, sorority sisters, lifelong Duke fans and those who have no idea what one-and-done means.
“It’s a school culture thing,” Behrens said.
And Krzyzewski helped build that culture.
“You’re sleeping for five weeks in a place that’s named after him in order to go watch a basketball game on a court that’s named after him,” Behrens said.
“That impact is going to stay.”
Students said while they have faith in current Duke associate head coach Jon Scheyer, who will succeed Krzyzewski, tenting won’t be going anywhere. And outrage would likely follow the suggestion of a new name for Krzyzewskiville.
How does tenting work?
The tradition was canceled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and shortened this year with the omicron variant delaying Duke’s in-person spring semester. That also likely contributed to the high demand for Saturday’s game against arch-rival UNC.
The rules are simple, but rigid.
This year, the students that scored the highest on the test pitched their tents and slept outside for three weeks during “blue tenting” season. Their order in line was based on scores from a second trivia test, attendance at Duke sporting events and earning spirit awards.
Up to 12 people can occupy a tent. Six people had to be in three separate tents through the night, and two people during the day.
Line monitors do checks throughout the tenting season to make sure the tents are properly manned.
During “white tenting” season, 30 more tents can join and the number of people occupying the tents decreases for the next two weeks. One member of the tent must be on duty during the day and two members at night. The order of white tents is determined by a “Race to the Secret Spot” scavenger hunt or at the discretion of the line monitors.
Another 30 “flex tents” are guided by the same rules, but they are not guaranteed a spot in the Carolina game.
In total, the population of K-Ville is about 1,500 students, occupying exactly 130 tents.
‘Somewhere I want to be’
It’s something you can’t do at any other college campus in America. And for some students, it’s why they came to Duke.
“If it’s a place where people love their school so much that they will literally sleep in a tent for six weeks in the winter, like that’s probably somewhere I want to be,” junior Jake Piazza said.
Piazza tented his freshman year, but he’ll be watching the game from a slightly different vantage point this year as sports editor of The Chronicle, Duke’s student-run newspaper. He’s covering the game and he wrote about the last two nights of tenting in the Coach K era in a recent column in The Chronicle.
“Students love tenting despite how odd or weird or insane it looks from an outsider’s perspective,” Piazza said.
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He talked to some of the most loyal tenters, who hung out in the designated study tent eating Lucky Charms and procrastinating writing papers, while others walked in with yellow jacket Coors. He watched students raise their hands in the air as Loud Luxury played on stage and stepped over pizza boxes with Coach K’s face on them. He watched the semifinal game of the K-Ville street ball tournament and later saw students line up for the final “P-checks,” where line monitors make sure tenters are present and accounted for.
He took it all in and felt the staying power of Coach K’s legacy.
“I know that the tent city will still return,” Piazza wrote. “The Cameron Crazies didn’t get their names for no reason.”
And as quickly as the tent city went up, it all came down. With their place in line secured, students deconstructed their tents about a week prior to the game to clear the lawn for other pregame festivities.
The last K-Ville with Coach K
It was eerily quiet in Krzyzewskiville just three days before the game this week — a stark difference to the chaos and sea of blue tents that filled the space the previous week.
Crews were setting up for ESPN’s “College GameDay” broadcast, Scheyer sat calmly at one end fielding phone calls and Duke athletes casually walked by the handful of abandoned tents scattered on the lawn.
Sophomore Charlotte Courdert sat on a stone wall overlooking an empty K-Ville while she painted the Cameron Indoor Stadium crest on the denim overalls she plans to wear on Saturday. The bright blue paint matched her dyed-hair that was tied up in a bun on top of her head. She stopped freshman guard Jaylen Blakes to have him sign the pant leg with a sharpie, which added the perfect touch.
A New York native, Courdert didn’t know Duke was a basketball school when she applied, but now, she understands the game, players’ strengths and the importance of Saturday’s game in particular. This spring semester was her first opportunity to participate in tenting since it was canceled last year, so she wasn’t going to miss it.
“I get to go to the game and that’s what I really care about, even if it’s not front row,” Courdert said.
She doesn’t know where exactly her spot will be, but in some ways it doesn’t matter.
Any spot is a good spot when you get to witness history at Cameron.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 11:19 AM with the headline "Tenting in Duke’s Krzyzewskiville: Will the tradition stay after Coach K’s last game?."
