Bobcats & Bubbles grows alongside TXST football’s Pac-12 era

The Texas State University community is getting more involved with football in ways outside of just attending games.

As the university begins its first season in the Pac-12 Conference, the fourth annual Bobcats & Bubbles hosted women from San Marcos to Canyon Lake during their biggest event to date. Attendees enjoyed an evening of shopping from local brands, silent auctions, photo ops, food and drinks, and inside looks at football operations. They were introduced to football staff and their wives while touring Athletics facilities followed by a postgame speech from Head Coach GJ Kinne.

This year, attendees were also treated to the first public appearance of Koko the Bobcat, the “long-lost sister” of Boko the Bobcat, which has been in development for nearly three years. 

The annual event was started over 10 years ago as The Women’s Clinic by alumna Monica Katz. The goal was to get women excited about the upcoming football season with a fundraising component. First Lady Beth Damphousse attended The Women’s Clinic after her and President Kelly Damphousse’s arrival in 2022.  

“We also had noticed there wasn’t a whole lot of engagement from businesses with Texas State,” Beth said. “There was a disconnect, so we started working on that. We brainstormed how we could make that work, and I pitched an idea to Summer Kinne (GJ Kinne’s wife) and Marci Coryell (Director of Athletics Don Coryell’s wife) to turn The Women’s Clinic into something completely different.”

The three of them traveled through San Marcos and New Braunfels to connect with local businesses and ask them to participate with their own TXST merchandise in the redesigned event, which would later be named Bobcats & Bubbles. Each business they asked said yes, and the event sold three times as many tickets as the first event.

The following year, many of the same businesses plus others who had heard about the event contacted TXST to get involved. The first edition of Bobcats & Bubbles was held in the Champions Suite at UFCU Stadium but had to expand to all the upper floor suites to accommodate the larger crowd. This year, close to 450 people attended compared to about 60 in 2022.

“My life gets very busy and I can’t do all the legwork, but Summer, Marci, and Monica have just flown with this idea,” Beth said. “They have put so much effort into making this bigger and better each year. Holly Hirsch, executive director of Presidential Events and Projects for Texas State, and her team, members of our Gold Star Society, along with so many TXST athletics staff members, pitch in to make the event possible. We couldn’t do it without their help.” 

One of those attendees was Nanette Finch, owner of Creeds & Crests in San Marcos. A longtime supporter of TXST and a donor, Nanette started her business in 1992 and performed seamstress work for the Strutters and Greek life gear. That work later grew to sewing logos, numbers, names, and patches onto the jerseys of all sports teams, including the new Pac-12 logo.

Her twin sister, Annette Hamon, works at TXST in University Advancement and often helps Nanette with seamstress work.

“I would love to be an alum, and I almost am,” Nanette said. “I don’t have that title, but I go to everything and have season tickets to almost every sport. So, when they started Bobcats & Bubbles to get the spirit going, I was like, ‘I’m in.’” 

Nanette is one of the first attendees to pay for tickets to attend each year of the event due to her passion for sports. She said when a university can produce winning sports teams, it gets the community excited.

“The event is like Homecoming for us,” she said. “Bringing in Koko, moving to the Pac-12, getting to know our great players—all of this makes a difference for our community.”

"My Strutter alum friends and I are all things Strutters, but we're also all things Texas State," said alumna Stoney Burk Walker, former Strutter and author of the children's book, "Boko the Bobcat" with fellow Strutter alum Jill Kemp Pankey as illustrator. 

Now with Koko the Bobcat on the scene, Stoney and Jill are bringing these two mascots together in a new children's book. "Starting at the top with President Damphousse and his wife, Beth, we see our teams, our dancers, and our coaches showing us how we can dream bigger, and it's working." 

Kristan Machado, owner of KnD’s Boutique, enjoys getting women “pumped up and hyped” to attend TXST football games.

Kristan met Beth, Summer, and Marci as they are frequent patrons of the store. When they asked if she wanted to first participate in Bobcats & Bubbles back in 2023, Kristan was excited to say yes.

“When the ladies show off their outfits while throwing the football around or participating in drills on the field like we did, it gets people excited about football.”

As a business owner, Kristen called the connection between the city and the university a “win-win” for everyone. 

“The university brings in students to San Marcos and the local businesses,” she said. “Specifically for Bobcats & Bubbles, if someone hadn’t heard of us before, now they know we’re just three blocks away from campus. It helps with awareness.”

Lynda Irvine, who recently supported the university’s baseball and softball facilities with a multimillion-dollar donation with her husband, Scott, and Chris and Shannon Rasmussen, first attended Bobcats & Bubbles last year.

As a big sports fan, Lynda enjoyed the inside view of football operations that she couldn’t get from cheering from the stands, including hearing about facility upgrades and improvements to student-athlete conditioning. 

“It’s also that feeling like you're a part of the fundraising and benefiting the athletics program,” Lynda said. “We support because of our love for the university, and we can see in real time what our contributions are doing for the university. With competing with major donating schools, we need our alumni to come back and participate and to remember where they came from.”

Alumna Katie Molina, real estate agent at Monica and Company Real Estate, got involved through Monica Katz. Katie helps run the event’s social media pages and communicates with the brands and vendors. “You get to meet a lot more Bobcat fans, and specifically more Bobcat fans who are women, which is really fun,” Katie said. “Because we have so many local businesses getting involved, it elevates Texas State as a whole and gets more people from the community to participate and get excited for the season.” 

Visit the TXST Athletics webpage to view upcoming schedules and for more ways to get involved with supporting student-athletes.