As an ex-varsity athlete at UBC, I appreciate your good intentions with this article. As athletes, we all wanted to fill the stands for our games every game.
Unfortunately, your suggestions need some more fact-checking.
1. CIS Final 8 Men's Basketball Nationals: tickets are more expensive than the average varsity game because it is NATIONALS. I understand that some tickets for single games are available for $10 — this is still more than the average varsity game if you are a student. I'm wondering why this was one of your suggestions. This game will already have tons of attendance (rightfully so, go ’Birds!). It has been heavily publicized — I even saw an ad on the side of a TransLink bus the other day. Nationals are a very big deal and it will be heavily attended. How about suggesting students get out to a lower profile game? As the Winter Classic and Homecoming have demonstrated, high profile games obtain high attendance. We should be concerned with not letting other competitions slip through the cracks and getting fans to games every week.
2. There are beer gardens at most games and beer prices vary from four to seven dollars. That is cheap beer. You won't find beer cheaper anywhere on campus except the Pit.
You're correct about social media. But as a grad student doing a communications degree, I can assure you that the athletics department is already trying to remedy this problem. If you take a look at every UBC varsity team’s social media and the social media of the athletic department, you will find exactly what you are asking for. The problem is with the rest of the student organizations at UBC and their lack of support for our varsity athletes. You should be contacting the AMS and The Calendar about this problem. They were huge contributors in making the Winter Classic and Homecoming the success that these events were — how about some publicity for all the other games?
As you have pointed out, the four varsity games that have been highly publicized by someone other than the athletic department were all men's varsity games. The AMS and The Calendar appear to show most of their support to men's varsity sports, when women's sports have won a comparable amount of championships for this university. Sounds like this is an issue that should be addressed.
If we want UBC Athletics to gain as many fans and support as NCAA Div. I schools in the United States or even as much support as Laval University obtains for its football program, the publicity and support needs to come from more university organizations than just the athletic department.
I appreciate your good intentions and do hope that UBC finds a way to get more students to games more often — especially the women's varsity games.
Alanna McMullen is a former member of the UBC Thunderbirds women's hockey team.