Re: Sayonara - Wayne State
No beer was served {:< ( So true about the hockey culture here in Motown. Just across the river in Windsor....THAT'S where the hawkey madness really begins. (Interestingly, not at the university level, though. They must take their edumacation seriously..) To me, the prospect of hockey at WSU, while kinda neat, was a bit of a head-scratcher. Basically a commuter college. A good chunk of the students are part-timers who have jobs, families and mortgages. No rink on campus. I mean, if you drive by on a typical football Saturday, their 6,000 (six) seat stadium/field is about 1/3 full..and they've been winning! I think 10 and 2 last year. Not a real surprise but really bummed for those girls.
Yeah, WSU football has been pretty darn good as of late. They've had a running back who was pretty much just lightning in a bottle. And the kid even managed to make it to a few NFL camps last year, think he ended up the year in New Orleans. A whole lot of GLIAC football fans were glad to see him go on to the NFL, because then he was causing less nightmares for our Defensive Coordinators.
To me thought, one of the things that has always hurt attendence at WSU, mostly at their football games, but at other events as well, was their total lack of a marching band there. Having a band around adds just so much more atmostsphere to any game. And heck, it can easily improve attendence. Not only can you count the band menbers, but they are likely to invite their friends, and family members to games as well. I would wager that a 50 member Marching band should be able to improve attendence at a football game by about 200.
Now, how does that relate to hockey? well, Marching Band during football gives the band kids a good time to come together, to become friends with their fellow band mates. Then, later on when the Marching Band kids break off into smaller pep bands for basketball and hockey games, then they've got a larger pool of friends that are a little more likely to show up for more of the games as well..
Correct mostly a commuter college, even with the med school, people live else where. Last year was good for football but they did not make the playoffs and are up and down in the GLIAC. The women's team was not promoted well, and it's not like they really needed an on campus rink. The rink was close enough, seemed to work well, and others used it so the word could have been spread.
Curious now as to why they didn't fold the women's team when they did the men's? Wonder if there are any Title IX implications?
Wayne's at 33,000+ I believe, and yeah, a lot of them are commuters. Still , with a little more effort, you would think that they would be able to do better with getting attendence there at games. Personally, I think they should add lights to their field, and have a few night games as well. It probably wouldn't hurt to try to get a DPS game of the week there every friday night as well. They've got a pretty nice field turf there, so they would be able to do it.
