Student section turnout needs to keep its momentum

Saturday’s first home game of the season brought a welcome change – student fans. The past several years, student-fan attendance has been fairly low. So, what changed this year?

The Athletics Department and Student Services have come together to entice students to show up. A semester’s worth of books, laundry bags and free sweatshirts were given out as prizes to students who attended the game.

Another factor which may have helped keep students at the game was a switch of sidelines for USD. From now on, USD will be on the sideline opposite that of the student section, allowing the team to see the student fans cheering them on. The opposing team is now right below the student section, paving the way for some interesting chants from USD students concerning the players of the opposing team.

While these seem meaningless, they actually have a good purpose. Sometimes people need incentive to show up.

Students are every bit a part of a game as the players are. Whether it’s coming together to chant cheers for USD or heckling the opposing team, in a sportsman-like manner of course, the louder the Dome is on game day the more motivated the football team will be.

Now we just need a repeat of last week’s attendance numbers at the upcoming Dakota Days home game against Youngstown State, and all the following games. Attendance will more than likely be high since it’s homecoming, but the trick is keeping students in the Dome past halftime, a notorious problem in years past.

If Student Services does what it did last week and if the football team can pull off a repeat of their game against Drake, then it shouldn’t be that hard to do. It’s not all on Student Services to keep them at the game, though. Students need to stick it out through all four quarters no matter the score. We are USD Coyotes, and we need to be standing together.

If we want a winning team, we need to support them every yard and every down of the way.