The University of Georgia is home to 21 varsity level sports teams, bringing fans from all over the country, but sometimes watching the sport is not the only way to get spectators involved and excited.
UGA women’s soccer team played against the Louisiana State Tigers in front of a crowd filled with 976 spectators on Oct. 5. Although many fans were there to enjoy the rivalry, their experience was uplifted thanks to UGA’s fan engagement sector of the UGA athletics program.
Laura Richardson, a junior sports management major, volunteers for UGA’s fan engagement program. Richardson enjoys the perks of getting to go behind the scenes at games, and she also gets to witness first-hand how the audience’s excitement can affect games.
“One of my favorite parts of fan engagement is getting to see the players interact with the fans,” said Richardson. “Fan engagement helps fans be more active and gives them incentives to go to the games.”
As a fan engagement volunteer, Richardson gets to help coordinate fan activities during halftime and other breaks in the games. During halftime of the soccer game, fan engagement volunteers coordinated two games, the “Crossbar Challenge” and “Smooth Operator. Both games gave lucky fans the chance to go onto the field and win varying prizes.
Although fan engagement is targeted for all fans, some spectators believe the activities and events are focused more significantly on the students who attend sporting events rather than kids and families.
“Families spend more money at sporting events than anyone else,” said Caroline and Matt Lewis, a couple who attended Sunday night’s game. “Our kids love to come [to events] when they get things.”
The Lewis’s have three younger daughters, each of whom play in a youth soccer program. Their attendance to the soccer game was in part due to the youth soccer scrimmage that occurred during half time. Each of their daughters got to participate in a six minute scrimmage on the field.
Although incentives vary depending on the event, fans who attend women’s soccer games have the chance to catch T-shirts when UGA scores a goal or a small bulldog plush when UGA kicks a corner kick during the game.
Fans are an essential part of many sporting events, and UGA’s fan engagement staff and volunteers work to get students, families and children involved and excited about their events.
Margaret Pope is a journalism major in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
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