Looking back at the women’s soccer team’s weekend, there are two numbers that stand out to me. The statistics I am referencing don’t have anything to do with goals scored, goals allowed or anything happening on the field for that matter. Rather, they deal with what was happening in the stands.
632 and 587. These are the official attendance statistics from the Wofford game on Friday and the Western Carolina game on Sunday respectively.
Although it may seem inconsequential to look at attendance for a nonrevenue sport, lets look at what the numbers mean to varsity soccer at N.C. State.
Last season, N.C. State’s average home attendance for women’s soccer was 292 fans per game at the Method Road Soccer Stadium. This was the lowest statistic for any of the 11 ACC teams in 2007, and it wasn’t even close.
Perhaps even more telling, last season’s opening game against Davidson drew 312 fans — not even half of this year’s opener.
If women’s soccer averaged 600 fans per game last season, as it could this year, it would have had the 5th highest attendance of any ACC team. That would have been an impossible goal at an off-campus facility that required weekday games to be scheduled during class time.
The bottom line is: the Method Road Soccer Stadium was slowly killing varsity soccer at N.C. State. Women’s soccer was a powerhouse in the eighties and early nineties when the program and stadium were both new. In the first 10 years of Method Road’s existence, the women’s team finished in the top-10 nationally seven times.
But as the rest of the ACC caught up, State slowly fell back. Today, State’s soccer teams are some of the worst in conference, and it is no coincidence that it has been playing in the league’s worst stadium.
If you are looking for a laugh one day, go to gopack.com and search “Method Road.” It is difficult to tell whether the person who wrote the piece was being a public relations machine, but I think I detect a little bit of sarcasm in the description of the old facility.
“The Wolfpack’s home field is an excellent facility for players and spectators alike.”
And my personal favorite:
“North Carolina State’s Method Road Soccer Stadium is one of the finest collegiate soccer facilities in the nation.”
It’s like reading Chinese propaganda on that nation’s human rights history.
There are very few schools that can match the passion State has about its athletics, but asking students to travel off-campus to watch games was too much.
If this weekend told us anything, it is that excitement may be coming back to State soccer after years of being absent. In this Millennium, the only Wolfpack soccer team to post a winning ACC record was when the men did it in 2005.
I don’t think either the men’s or women’s soccer teams are going to win the conference championship this year or the next. But one of the largest obstacles to the progression of the two programs was removed when the team’s moved into their new facility.
