Over the last two years, Lamar athletics has seen a significant improvement in all sports. Just last year the Cardinals won the Southland Conference Commissioner Cup, 14 points ahead of second place McNeese.
Baseball, basketball and football have all seen renovations in their facilities,
But despite all of this, one thing has remained the same — a lack of attendance.
Last year the Cardinals won the regular-season baseball championship, the regular season women’s basketball championship, the women’s soccer regular season and tournament championships, and the women’s cross country championship.
The Neches Federal Credit Union Arena at the Montagne Center holds 10,080 people. One would think that with both basketball teams placing second in the SLC, attendance would be high. Unfortunately, attendance actually dropped from the previous season.
The Lamar men’s team won 20 games, had the best SLC record in program history, and reached the SLC tournament final, yet people don’t come to the games. Last year the average attendance at the Montagne Center was 1,990, this year it dropped to 1,793.
The men’s team isn’t the only one that has seen the decrease. Despite winning the regular season last year and reaching the SLC final the last two years, women’s attendance has drastically dropped from 1,048 to 762.
Provost Umphrey Stadium holds over 16,000 people yet it hasn’t seen full attendance since 2010, the program’s first year back, when they averaged 16,078. Football just had its best record since 2018 and they still can’t fill up half the stadium, averaging just 6,706.
Clearly performance isn’t the issue.
Lamar students have no school spirit. They don’t care about athletics because they still think athletics are bad. Admittedly, for a while Lamar was the laughing stock, winning only one football game and one men’s basketball game in 2022.
It’s not like the marketing department hasn’t been doing anything to fix this issue. With free T-shirts and food at almost every game, they are trying to attract students to the games, but with little success.
Every game is free for students, so it doesn’t make sense why they don’t show up.
LU students need to build school spirit and support their alma mater.
Lamar is no longer a losing school. They have established a winning culture in all sports.
Creating a better atmosphere at games helps the teams win and leads to better recruiting, which leads to winning more games, and so on.
It’s not just the players on the field or the court that will make Lamar a top-notch university.
We owe it to the players and to ourselves to be part of a winning team.