By Esteban Ramirez
Assistant Sports Editor

Athletics is a huge part of universities, but in the first year being in the Western Athletic Conference the attendance for most California State University, Bakersfield home games were
not up to par with other schools.

According to the attendance numbers of last year on ncaa.org, five out of the seven CSUB sports teams (men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball, women’s soccer and volleyball) that attendance was counted for were ranked in the bottom half of the Western Athletic Conference.

CSUB men’s basketball ranked sixth in the WAC with an average of 1,264 home attendance.

Women’s basketball also ranked sixth with an average of 313 home attendance. Baseball ranked second with an average of 465 home attendance. Softball ranked fifth with an average of 107 home attendance. Men’s soccer ranked third with an average of 341 home attendance.

Women’s soccer ranked sixth with an average of 288 home attendance, and volleyball ranked last with an average of 221 home attendance.

Assistant athletics director for communications Corey Costelloe said that for some of those sports they don’t put a lot advertising into it because they don’t have the money, and because some of those aren’t sports that the conference is necessarily worried about attendance in.

“So it’s men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball and men’s soccer, so we’re doing good in most of them except men’s basketball,” said Costelloe.

Men’s basketball coach Rod Barnes said it was a bit disheartening to not have a high attendance at the games.

“It can be disheartening when you come out and play and there’s not many people there, and you start thinking does anyone really care,” said Barnes. “I’m hoping that we can build so those guys don’t even have to imagine that that is the case.

“Our guys really want people to come see them play to defend our home court and to defend Bakersfield because that’s basically feel like we are doing. When we say Bakersfield, we don’t just think of ourselves we think about this community.” The more people we can get involved and to come I think it helps our guys. Fans want us win so they can have pride in us and players want fans to come then they’ll have pride in what they’re doing because they don’t want to let people down. It goes hand and hand.”

Junior center Aly Ahmed commented on the importance of having higher attendance at games.“It makes a huge difference,” said Ahmed. “It can help us a lot, and we need it.”

Women’s basketball redshirt-senior guard Tyonna Outland said that it would be great to have more fan support at games.

“I think having more fans here would give us more support because I remember against Seattle University last year the fans helped us comeback,” said Outland. “The energy was there, it was on our side and it definitely helps.”

CSUB women’s basketball coach Greg McCall commented on the importance of having more fans at games.

“It is important in so many different ways because last year we worked so hard to be preseason ranked number one, which means hopefully we’ll be able to draw more fan support,” said McCall. “That has been important to us so we can continue to make our program grow not just with the athletic department but also outside with the fan support.”

Costelloe said that the biggest part of their advertising campaign to increase attendance at games has been the ‘we are all ’Runners’ slogan.

“I think it is really trying to create that whole emotional attachment to the program not only on campus but locally as well,” he said.

He added that with that they have also done things like lowering ticket prices. The per-single game tickets at basketball games used to be $20 to sit in the blue seats and now have been dropped down to $16 a game. The general admission seat prices also have gone down to $8.

They also created a kids ticket that is $5 for any seat in the house.

According to director of marketing and promotions for athletics Brynn Conapitski, the new advertisement has come from $20,000 budget that they get each year.

He said that a big problem that CSUB basketball has faced with attendance is that from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day students are not on campus, but he said that the fact that the games will now be in the Icardo Center will help.

“I think that we’re 100 percent here will help because it’s more located to where people live,” Costelloe said. “Rabobank is great, but it is downtown and not many people live downtown. I think that will help just with convenience.”