Dave's place - Support for soccer is missing

By: David Cordill

Posted: 10/27/08

The mother of one of the members of UMKC men's soccer team pulled me aside just before the Kangaroos kicked off against Oral Roberts University last Saturday.

Looking across the pitch at the empty stands on the east side of Bourke Field she expressed dismay at the small crowd turnout.

"It's Senior Day," she said.

She wondered aloud where all UMKC's student support was, especially on an afternoon where she would join her husband to participate in a halftime ceremony honoring her son and his fellow seniors.

After briefly surveying the situation, I too began to speculate why UMKC's students were staying away.

I took my usual roving position on the asphalt drives behind the team benches, and looked across the pitch to count the fans in the east stands.

There were fifteen in all, and considering the reactions among a small pocket of them who rose to cheer during ORU's starting lineup, about a third of them were for the other team.

On my side of the field it was more densely populated, but even then there were only about 50 people there at best.

And most of these people were staunch UMKC alumni game regulars, UMKC student athletes, UMKC Athletics Department staff, and the parents of UMKC soccer players.

The attendance figure for the match was 185, according to the official post-game scoresheet. But I'm not sure if there were that many people within a one-mile radius of the stadium, and that includes the players and game officials participating in the match. Things weren't much better the week before.

Only 124 showed up for UMKC's match against the University of Central Arkansas the previous Saturday. And although the Kangaroos did draw 455 fans for their annual match against Rockhurst University, a considerable amount of those people were rooting for the Hawks, as they share their home field with UMKC.

But three weeks ago, 315 rowdy supporters filed into the stands for the Kangaroos' homecoming game with IUPUI.

Student groups yelled and chanted and noisy horns blared from the throng. People in attendance were a part of the spectacle. The UMKC cheerleaders even showed up.

This show of support was the product of simple promotion. The game was treated as a homecoming event and was advertised as such.

UMKC soccer, off to their third best start ever, suffers in attendance because the student body is not aware of its existence.

The obvious remedy would be to treat every home game like a homecoming event. Unfortunately, the Roos have only one game remaining at Bourke Field this year.

It just makes me wonder if it could have been handled differently.

If the UMKC Athletics Web site can engineer full-page pop ups to hawk basketball season tickets and golf tournament sign ups, it certainly could have done more to bring attention to university's most successful sports program, as well as other competitive sports teams.

Several years ago, game day placards were posted at various campus locations advertising the team, time, and place of a UMKC Athletics event.

In hindsight, something like this could have directed students to their school's soccer locale which is located within walking distance of the campus.

Accessibility to the team was, and continues to be difficult during UMKC's multitude of away games this season.

Some of the games have been televised online, albeit through an exorbitant fee for most college students. Could these games have been made available at an on-campus student venue for mass viewing?

I realize it's easy for me to complain about an area not within the realm of my expertise and that UMKC has an abbreviated seven-game home schedule this season.

And I do think getting students in the stands will be much easier once the new on-campus soccer stadium is built.

But what the future holds does little to affect the impressions of those parents who walked out onto the field with their sons at halftime last Saturday.

dcordill@unews.com