Basketball coaches recruit fans by e-mail
Despite the relative success of the men’s and women’s basketball programs this season, many seats in Coors Events Center remain empty during home games.
The CU men’s basketball team has already won more games than all of last season, and the women’s basketball team has broken the Top 25.
The CU athletic department is working hard to increase attendance at the games according to Megan Hurst, marketing and promotions coordinator for the Buffaloes.
Recently the athletic department has been sending out weekly e-mails to CU students from the basketball head coaches Jeff Bzdelik and Kathy McConnell-Miller.
Hurst said the e-mails are a good a way for the coaches to keep in touch with the student body and alert them of upcoming home games and promotions the marketing department may be running.
“We do a lot of stuff at home games for students like give away pizza in the student section,” Hurst said.
CU students will only receive these e-mails if they purchased season tickets to football, Hurst said.
The marketing department would send e-mails to all students, but the football season ticket holders database was the only list of students they had access to, Hurst added.
First-year men’s coach Bzdelik said he has used e-mail to stay in contact with university students before.
“We did this at Air Force too,” Bzdelik said. “Sending e-mails is a way for us to say to the students; we need your support, we’re going to give you everything we have, and let’s have some fun.”
Coach McConnell-Miller said it is difficult for her to tell whether or not students are attending women’s home games, but they are definitely not congregating in the student section in the way she and her players had hoped they would.
“We need to do everything we can to increase student participation in our sport,” McConnell-Miller said.
McConnell-Miller said she believes that CU students would enjoy coming to the home games.
“We believe that we have a product on the court that, if people come to see us play once, they will come back,” McConnell-Miller said.
Ethan Rosenberg, a senior integrative physiology major at CU, said that he has been to two men’s basketball games this season and is paying more attention to Buffs basketball than in years past.
Rosenberg said he receives the e-mails and they help to keep him up to date on what is going on with the Buffs.
“I don’t usually read the entire e-mails,” Rosenberg said. “But the headings of the e-mails let me know what’s going on. For instance, I know that this Saturday’s game is a white out.”
Chris Ingram, a junior political science major, said he considers himself a big Buffs fan, but he does not always read the e-mails from the coaches. However, Ingram, who has been to four men’s games this season, said he likes receiving the e-mails from coach Bzdelik nevertheless.
“It shows that he really wants us to be there,” Ingram said. “And that we really need more fan support.”
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Brad Cochi at bradley.cochi@thecampuspress.com.
