The Rosario University Club was born from the desire of young students to have their own club for university students in the city. Today, 100 years after that dream, UNR graduates tell the story in a collector's book.
“When it all began
The man is breathing heavily. With his hands on his knees he holds up his hunched body, on the verge of exhaustion. The dust of dirt floats in the air and does not dissipate until the last of the competitors crosses the finish line. But the die is cast, the tape marking the finish line has had its executioner: puffing out his chest and with open arms, Gerónimo Etchart embraces glory. The 800 metres flat belong to him, hence the high chin, the tired smile and the look at the public in the stands who, dressed in hats, suits and ties, embrace the sporting feat.
It is September 6, 1924, and the Second University Athletics Tournament is being held in Rosario. There are still no event producers, nor are there any major sponsors to facilitate the task; marketing is a word that has been rarely heard in these lands up to now. However, the organization is as auspicious as the times allow. There are discus throwing, javelin competitions, pole vault and athletics in its various distances. The variety of disciplines in which the students compete required two locations to carry out the meeting: the Municipal Stadium and the stadium of the Gimnasia y Esgrima Club of Rosario.
It is difficult to know what Etchart was thinking about while he was running; what his mind was resting on as his strides took him away from his competitors, who were also his companions, his peers. But one thing was clear: what they were doing could not stop there. And why not think of a club? A club for the young university students of the city: the Rosario University Club.
It is also difficult to imagine whether the five young people who planned that first sporting event imagined that everything would go so far. Or whether they were aware that the seed planted in the basement of room XIV of the Centenario Hospital, where the Semiology of Medicine classes were taught, would germinate in such a way that, one hundred years later, the Rosario University Club would be celebrating its first century of life. The truth is that Etchart, together with Ángel Cordero Araya, Enrique Bertotto, Francisco Roselló and Manlio Bertini —colleagues and members of the event's organizing committee—, laid the foundation stone.
This is how the centenary book of the club begins, created by a team of communication, design and art professionals, graduates of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario“The book has that spirit that the Public University leaves us, the value of being a student or a graduate and the club as a meeting space that gives us a feeling of permanence in the University over time,” say its authors.
The idea for this publication arose at the beginning of 2022 when the club called on one of its members, Juan Mascardi, to begin designing the project. They agreed to take into account the generational crossover, that the past, present and future operate as a central axis and that it be an object that can be opened on any page and a story can be found. In this way, the proposal was to do it from narrative journalism, looking for chronicles and character profiles as vehicles and devices to tell the story.
From the beginning, a team was formed to work together on writing, visual design and the aesthetic proposal, not as separate entities but as a construction of meaning. And in this we can recognize something typical of the work of the social communicator in that communication, art and design flow permanently. Felipe Acosta was in charge of coordinating the institutional project, Juan Mascardi of the direction, management and narrative editorial production, Clara López Verrilli of the direction, management and visual editorial production, Ignacio Cagliero of the Research, journalistic production and writing and Adriana La Sala of the design and editorial layout.
The work plan they presented was more like an audiovisual because it was organized in stages and was put together like a movie. The first thing they did was design a structure divided by milestones, some more linked to emotional or symbolic issues such as the creation of the club's crest and anthem and others divided by sports, social issues and history. "There was a lot of interest in narrating that Rosario of 1920 and rethinking the book as a log for Rosario in 2124, which would go back 100 years and forward 100 years," explains Mascardi.
Through in-depth interviews with witnesses who participated in different moments, they gave shape to these voices. This is how each chapter has one or two characters who make the stories accelerate. Some are more epic, like the one at the beginning, which starts with the athletics test, and from there the dream of having their own club is born among these medical students.
“The University Club emerged from a student group like so many others, but this one lasted for 100 years,” is one of the book’s most moving and notable quotes. López Verrilli says with emotion that when he reads it he remembers the projects he had with his classmates at the Faculty, the first radio program, the recording of a demo, the publication of a magazine, “those experiences of groupness, of wanting to do things and of the fact that ‘no’ is not a condition but something that is becoming clearer all the time.”
From all the collected material, Mascardi recalls an anecdote from 1960 when the Subfluvial tunnel was built, a transcendental work that joined the cities of Paraná and Santa Fe and became the first road link that linked Mesopotamia with the rest of the country. The work was managed by the governors of Santa Fe Carlos Sylvestre Begnis and Entre Ríos Raúl Uranga. As young men, representing their clubs Universitario de Rosario and Atlético Estudiantes de Paraná, they had faced each other in a historic rugby match. Thirty years later, as governors of both provinces, they joined forces to carry out this great work and decided to do it underwater because the riverbed is provincial and thus they avoided managing it with the nation.
The creative team worked with a lot of photographic material from the club's archive, which has a space dedicated to documentation, as well as with the magazine that the institution has been publishing for years. They also used journalistic materials and materials from the members themselves, such as old membership cards and medals. They also digitalised audiovisual content on DVDs about historic plays, where you can see the changes in format and screen. They also took into account the typography of the period to incorporate it in some sections.
In addition to the archives, they produced new photos for the book with the particularity of the current context. Many are in vertical format like those that any member could have taken to upload to an Instagram story. They include birthdays at the club that are part of its idiosyncrasy, records of a match, a stand, tattoos of players that have the U of the shield.
All these images, both contemporary and contemporary, are in constant dialogue; there is no chronological issue. For example, the photo of the first athletics race, which is small in size, was incorporated into the book with the gesture of a hand holding it, and it can be seen from a current perspective. “We were constantly in dialogue so that this historical material would speak to current generations,” says López Verrilli.
With the creative intention of having the text support the image and the image nourish the text, Mascardi believes that they arrived at an aesthetic proposal that “at times resembles the magazine El Gráfico, at times a design piece or an archive log.” With 300 color pages, a hard cover with a dust jacket and a high-quality design and binding, the club’s centenary book is an art object that rescues the spirit and values of university students.
Journalist: Victoria Arrabal