Trevor Kauer met his boyfriend, Derek Thompson, at the Moscow Farmers Market last July.
Kauer, a University of Idaho student and EMT, was presenting CPR lessons when he met Thompson, a Washington State University student, who was at breakfast with a friend. The UI and WSU seniors connected right away.
Kauer, a University of Idaho student and EMT, was presenting CPR lessons when he met Thompson, a Washington State University student, who was at breakfast with a friend. The UI and WSU seniors connected right away.
Diamond Koloski | Argonaut
WSU student, Kelsey Nash, laughs as her boyfriend Matt Reuger, hailing from UI, describes how his team will beat the Cougars this weekend.
“They hate us, but we’re totally fine with them,” Kauer said. “Although, I like to think of it as ‘They’re trashy, we’re classy.’”
Thompson said he was even surprised when he found out how the UI population responds to WSU visitors.
“It’s true, you guys are super nice,” Thompson said. “The Vandals shirts he gives me? I have no problem wearing them, but I don’t wear them on my campus.”
Kauer said part of the difference is that the student populations of each campus express their school pride in differing ways.
“We’ve gone out before, and Derek will start yelling ‘Go Cougs’ out the window,” Kauer said. “That’s a thing they do on the WSU campus, you’ll just be walking down the street and they just yell, ‘Go Cougs.’ You don’t see that here.”
Both Kauer and Thompson are passionate about their universities. Kauer said they don’t just experience the rivalry externally, but they also sometimes perpetuate it within their relationship.
“I’m the president of the Student Alumni Relations Board, and there’s a pre-game party for the game on Saturday,” Kauer said. “I get a plus-one, but he won’t go with me because he wants to wear WSU gear and I won’t let him.”
While Kauer and Thompson found each other in Moscow, Matthew Rueger and Kelsey Nash f irst met through their job at Zeppoz, a bowling alley in Pullman.
Rueger is a fourth-year accounting major at UI and Nash is a UI graduate who is currently pursuing her graduate degree at WSU.
Unlike Kauer and T hompson, Rueger and Nash said they haven’t experienced much of the rivalry between the two schools.
“It’s like the time for the season. The day is nigh for the battle of the Palouse, so it might be heightened a bit,” Rueger said. “I haven’t really experienced it. Zeppoz is in Pullman and I wear Idaho gear every day almost — I feel like they’re too geographically close to be such a heated rivalry.”
Kauer and Thompson said they believe the rivalry between the schools exists, but that it doesn’t rank the highest in the rivalry hierarchy.
“One commonality is we both hate BSU. We hate BSU all of the time, but WSU and UI? We’re good,” Kauer said. “BSU is like what UW is to WSU — I hate blue and orange, he hates purple and gold.”
When WSU plays the University of Washington or Boise State University the two schools tend to band together and root for a common cause, Kauer said.
While Rueger and Nash don’t play into the rivalry anymore, they said they both used to dislike UI because of where they grew up. Rueger is from southern Idaho, where more pride is sported for BSU and Nash, a Pullman native, grew up cheering for WSU.
“I remember when I was growing up, I hated UI,” Nash said. “It was then that they played each other a lot and I thought UI was the worst. Then I came to school here.”
Now, Nash said she is going to make a shirt that represents UI and WSU so she can support both of her universities at tomorrow’s game.
Corrin Bond
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