By John Evanko
Thousands of people flood into Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium and Freedom Hall to support the Cardinal football and basketball teams as they go into battle. It is great to see all the fan support, but these are only two of the University of Louisville’s many sports.
The other sports are exciting to watch, but very few fans come out to support them. Part of this is a lack of effort from the student body. However, the students are not the only ones to blame.
Many times two or three different sporting events are on the same day at the same time, and fans are forced to choose one over the other. In August, the field hockey team played No. 10 Michigan State while the women’s soccer team played No. 8 Texas. Fans should have been pouring in to support the Cards as they battled the nation’s best. Instead, nearly all of the fans were at the U of L/UK football game.
It is impossible to schedule every sporting event around every other event on campus, but each sport deserves to have raving fans attending the biggest games of the year. So, we have to start small.
“It is all about pinpointing two or three key games for every sport and isolating those games,” said Trevor Joelson, a senior and Student Government Association Student Athletic Director. “Make sure no other big sporting events or campus events are going on and hopefully next year those two or three games will turn into three or four.”
The Athletic Department should work with other schools and on-campus organizations so the biggest games are isolated, especially with the non-revenue sports. This would give students a better opportunity to support all the sports at U of L.
So before looking at the empty seats and blaming student spirit, remember that students don’t always have a choice. Or rather, they are forced to choose.
