Rose basketball highlights
FRI.| 4-12-24 | ENTERTAINMENT
Explaining the empty bleachers
FRI. | 10-29-21 | SPORTS
As we all know, one of Rose’s biggest attributes is the athletic program. There are a variety of sports to choose from, and the majority of the teams are top quality and highly successful in the conference and even beyond it. However, an issue with this wide variety of sports is the fan participation. There are a lot more fans and rowdy rampants, Rose’s famous student section, at the more popular sports games like football, basketball and volleyball than there are at the less popular sports competitions, like tennis, lacrosse and swimming.
There are many possible reasons as to why this occurs. The first reason is the seasons that the sports are played in and what the weather is like during the sports games. For example, football games are played in the evening once the day has cooled down and also in the fall. This may attract fans with the nice temperature and cool fall air. Volleyball and basketball have the advantage of
Photo by Emmy Ingalls
being indoor sports, as this may attract fans because they do not have to worry about heat, cold or rain. On the contrary, tennis matches take place right after school in the blazing heat. Even though tennis is also a fall sport, the difference between 4 PM and 7 PM demonstrates a great change in temperature outside by dropping a significant number of degrees.
Another reason that the fan attendance presents a change in different sports may be the layout of the playing field/court. A football field measures 100 yards, with members of both teams on this field at the same time. This allows fans to sit in the stands and watch multiple players all playing together at one time. This is similar to volleyball in the sense that volleyball players are on the court at the same time and all play together, allowing for the fans to watch the volleyball team as a whole. In contrast, when going to watch a tennis match, you have one or two players on each court at one time. This makes it hard for fans to watch multiple players on the team at once. Similarly when watching a swim meet, members of the team could be completely across the pool from one another and the whole team most definitely does not swim the same event. Additionally, tennis and swimming are both sports that have been made into teams, even though they are played/done by individuals and the team does not work together as a whole.
The idea of the field/court influencing fan attendance is not completely reliable as lacrosse games have a lower attendance than the more popular sports, and the lacrosse team plays together as a whole on the field. This also is the case for the soccer team, who has a higher number of fans than lacrosse does, but still not very many. Even though the idea of getting to watch all of the players play together is not very dependable, it should still be taken into consideration because this can be an important aspect to some fans.
I think that this fan attendance difference can bother some players and coaches on the lower end of the fans as they want their sport to be as popular and well liked as other sports. It is not that these sports are boring to watch; I have gotten very into lacrosse games and tennis matches myself. If fans are going to show such great attendance at football and volleyball games, then why can’t they do the same at tennis matches, swim meets and lacrosse games?
