Being a hockey fan, I have been to almost all of the men’s home ice hockey games in my four years here at RPI. Since my freshman year, I have noticed a steady decline in attendance at these games. This, to be blunt, is disappointing. When the attendance has been better, the team has shown more intensity and will to win close games.
At Friday’s important game against our Route 7 and Capital District rival, Union, the attendance was only 3,415, with about 1,000 of those being Union fans. The Engineers were down by two goals twice in the game but fought back each time. The second comeback fell just short as RPI ended up losing the game 5-4. The next night at Union, whose arena holds 2,500, was sold out, with about 500 or so RPI fans in attendance. With the bigger crowd, Union went on to win the game 3-2 to complete the weekend sweep.
In the six home games this year, the average attendance at men’s ice hockey games has been 3,472 people, almost 1,750 people below the 5,217 capacity of Houston Field House. Take away the home opener against UConn during Family Weekend and the Black Friday game against Clarkson and the average attendance drops drastically to 2,832 people per game.
In fact, for the Saturday night game against St. Lawrence—the night after Black Friday—the attendance dropped from 4,980 on Friday to 2,991. It is absolutely ridiculous to have a 2,000 person drop from one night to the next. I’ll admit that tickets for Friday’s game were free for students but is four dollars really that much to pay for a couple hours of watching your peers and classmates compete against a conference opponent that is quickly becoming a rival. I think not.
Four dollars is less than half the cost to go see a movie at Crossgates. On top of that, games are usually over before 9:30, which gives everyone plenty of time to go out and party—most parties don’t start until after 10-10:30 anyways, and bars don’t start filling up until then as well.
The women’s hockey team is having similar problems with attendance. Next season they will be moving up to Division-I and will need the same support the men’s team should be recieving.
This past weekend the women, who are ranked eighth in the nation among Division-III teams, had their home opening weekend against UMass-Boston. The attendance at the two games was 203 and 152 people. This is upsetting since the women’s games are free to attend.
So I challenge all of you who don’t already to come out to a few games: both men’s and women’s. It really means a lot to the teams. They have commented numerous times that they feed off the energy of the crowd, and the larger the crowd, the more energy there is to feed off of.
