This past weekend showed two polar opposites of attendance
patterns at UCSD home games. For Spirit Night on Friday, almost 4,000 students
showed to support the Tritons as they took on the San Francisco State Gators.
The lively crowd proved as a great sixth man for the basketball teams, willing
the women’s squad to a quality win and doing all it could to help the men seek
out an overtime win. For as much energy as there was on Friday, the following
night saw the attendance return to normal — barely a few hundred people watched
the games versus
“It’s very frustrating coming from Spirit Night last night
to seeing the poor turnout for tonight’s game,” Senior Associate Athletic
Director Ken Grosse said. “But I think that there are a lot of things that go
into that. For instance, Spirit Night is always on a Friday and we get a lot
more students out on that night than on Saturday. Also, we always push both the
men’s and women’s teams so that usually means that students will have watched
five hours of basketball the night before, so coming back the next day with
midterms around the corner always helps draw a lot less people to these games.”
With the one-year anniversary of the sports referendum fee
increase approaching, it becomes a crucial time for reflection on the past 12
months and speculation on the future implementation of the new funds.
A single year of data is not enough to compare and contrast
last year’s attendance figures with those from this year, because the timing
and scheduling of home games changes every year and is thus incomparable. This
year, many UCSD teams played a majority of their games during university
vacations, leaving their home events mostly unattended. Instead of simply
analyzing numbers, a better litmus test for student participation in school
sports are the attendance trends regarding the performance of individual teams.
It is a common generalization that UCSD fans have somewhat
fair-weather attendance tendencies, choosing to only go to games that are very
popular, and only to watch teams that are performing well. Last year, the men’s
water polo team made it to the national semifinals, and the attendance at 2006
home games was a very good indication of students’ pride in the team and their
dedication to supporting the winning squad.
This season, however, the team was significantly less
successful, yet attendance actually improved, with home games averaging 1,106
fans per game. One possible explanation for this is that, with students now
shelling out more money a year toward athletics, they have decided to take a
more active role in supporting the Triton community.
Similar trends were seen with many other teams in the last
year, a possible sign that paying the extra $71 a quarter toward the athletics
department has led many students to become more avid fans. Men’s volleyball
posted three of its top 10 single-match attendance figures in 12 years at RIMAC
last season, including a team record attendance of 847 versus UCLA. In December
2007, the men’s (1,121) and women’s basketball (702) openers both had their
largest ever Fall Quarter attendance figures, according to Grosse.
While large crowds create a better sense of school spirit
and community among the student body, they also provide a huge boost to the
athletes themselves.
“It’s always good to see the support and it always pumps us
up for the game to see that the student body is behind us; we always love
people coming out to watch us,” sophomore guard Annette Ilg said. “[For games
where there a not a lot of fans] it just means that we need to be louder and
support each other as a team but it’s definitely more fun when there is a
crowd.”
Even though the occasional Triton home game is heavily
attended, the majority of the events go unwatched, and all Triton teams and athletes
have to deal with a lack of support that competing schools do not. The UCSD
baseball team, for example, is coming off its best season in school history and
is ranked 15th nationally in the preseason poll — yet its home games usually
count more people in the dugouts than in the stands.
“It’s tough to show up day after day and not see a lot of
support,” sophomore pitcher Kirby
said. “It just makes it harder to play the game with a lot of intensity. We do
the best that we can and we do a good job of it, but it definitely is a big
advantage to go to your games and have a bunch of people in the stands rooting
for you. It is hard to represent a school that doesn’t really support you.”
Only time will tell whether the UCSD student body will use
its referendum increase as a catalyst to boost attendance, but for now it is
clear that some improvement has taken place in the last year. But the turnout
at Triton home games still has much improvement ahead of it to fully live up to
the motto of Triton sports as “a proud tradition of athletic excellence.”
