Surrounded by the buzz of hungry students eating lunch and the sound of silverware hitting ceramic plates, Tammy Cress sits behind the check-in counter at the Piazza Fresca, the cafeteria at Illini Tower residence hall. With her small, five-foot frame protruding only slightly from behind the shiny stone counter, Cress takes the ID from the next student in the line stretching out the door, swipes his meal card and from behind her glasses looks at the machine to her right, making sure the swipe went through. After the good-to-go beep, Cress says thank you in her slight southern drawl and greets the next person in line.

Cress has spent several hours a day, five days a week for 12 years behind the Piazza Fresca counter. But for over 30 years, Cress has been an Illini basketball fanatic, and a poetic one at that. When Cress was in junior high, she began to watch the games on TV.

“I would want to go and watch them, but my dad would always tell me, ‘You can see it so much better on TV,'” Cress said. “But after I saw a game in person, I was hooked.”

After graduating from high school in a class of 35 near her town of Allerton, Ill., Cress went to work at Sears in Marketplace Mall. That is when she began expressing her love for basketball in a rather artistic fashion.

“When I was working at Sears, I would write poems about most of the basketball games,” Cress said. “If there was a favorite player I would take one game and highlight what he did and make a poem out of it.”

One of Cress’s favorites was Bruce Douglas, who played for the team in the 80s.

“I remember how one started out,” Cress said. “Bruce, I’m not very good at drawing pictures at all, but this is supposed to be a diagram of Marketplace Mall. So take I-74 north Neil street, and inside 200 T, the division I worked in, is the biggest Illini fan you’ll ever meet.”

Poems like this prompted Cress’s supervisor at Sears to contact The Daily Illini and tell them about her poetic Illini fan employee. After meeting Cress, a reporter at The Daily Illini called a different player, Kevin Bontemps, and told him to visit Cress.

Some time after that, Cress saw Bontemps at a basketball game. Bontemps remembered how Cress liked Douglas and told her to wait.

“It would have been five or 10 minutes that I was waiting there, and there comes Bruce Douglas flying down the steps to meet me and you know I’m short and he’s tall and I was beside myself,” Cress said.

Even some 20 years later, after moving to Urbana where Cress, unmarried, lives with her mother, and getting a new job at Illini Tower, she is still a favorite among the team members.

“I saw Brian Randle last year and I told him, win or lose, I love my basketball team,” she said. “And he told me, ‘There’s not many fans out there like you.'”

Cress tries to pass on her love of sports to those around her, even if they’re not exactly knowledgeable in the area.

“She knows a whole lot about sports, and I pretend to, so I pretend to talk to her about sports,” said Carol Pearson, a cook at the Piazza Fresca.

“Carol has this football book for dummies, she doesn’t really know a bunch about sports and we’re always kidding with each other,” Cress said.

The two have a motto about being sports fans. “When we talk about sports we always say, ‘If you can’t be an athlete, be an athlete supporter,'” Pearson said.

Although Cress never considered being a student at the University, working on campus is always something she’s wanted to do.

“When I came here I was like, ‘Wow, this is the place for me,'” she said. “I like being around the students and my co-workers. It’s a fun atmosphere for me.”

Angela Foster, a senior in LAS and resident adviser at Illini Tower, has heard about Cress’ love for basketball, but knows her better for her friendliness and caring personality.

“Whenever I go to the Piazza Fresca, we talk,” Foster said. “We have a little conversation about my classes and my day, and Tammy tries to encourage me and tells me it’s almost done (and) I’m about to graduate.”

Cress doesn’t foresee herself leaving her post at Piazza Fresca anytime soon.

“She’s really sweet, every time I see her she has a smile on her face,” Foster said.