To see a database of LSU baseball attendance, click here.
Editor’s note: This story is the second in a five-part series involving attendance at LSU athletic events.Tiger Stadium is full every Saturday in the fall, no matter the opponent. Alex Box Stadium is the same way in the spring.But football and baseball games in Louisiana are more synonymous to religious rites than a fun night in town.Smaller sports at LSU must find ways to entice fans, especially students, to support their teams.LSU’s attendance statistics during the previous decade show these sports have found a niche using the priority points system.Priority points were instituted in 2005 and have been used since then to determine if students receive home football tickets. It also determines the rank in which students are selected for away-game football tickets.Students can accumulate points by scanning their student IDs at the gate. Every home football game has a value of 20 priority points, and the Athletic Department assigns two games for every other sport as designated point games, worth two points per game.The attendance differences between priority point games and regular games are staggering.The LSU soccer team drew more than 1,000 people twice in its 10 home games in 2009. Both of those games were priority-point games.The LSU softball team reeled in more than 2,000 fans just once in 2009. That game was also a priority-point game.
Women’s sports at LSU have also found another way to both raise numbers at the turnstiles and perform a public duty.LSU, along with the entire Southeastern Conference and many other schools around the country, has begun to hold annual breast cancer awareness games and events. The money raised at those events goes toward a local or national breast cancer foundation and also alerts women to the dangers of ignoring the symptoms of breast cancer.The LSU volleyball team holds an annual “Dig Pink” match to help the Side Out Foundation, an organization pairing volleyball enthusiasts with breast cancer researchers. This year’s event was held during Breast Cancer Awareness month in October.The attendance at the “Dig Pink” match last season was 963 fans, the team’s fourth-largest crowd of the season.University Dean of Students K.C. White said in October the breast cancer matches do wonders for both the community and the volleyball team.”[These matches] are an opportunity to raise awareness, to generate support and rally behind a lot of great things to find not only a victory as it relates to volleyball, but also a cure for breast cancer,” White said.But the biggest of the breast cancer awareness sporting events is hosted by the gymnastics team.LSU’s gymnastics team has annually hosted the Etta James Memorial Meet during the last three seasons. The meet is sponsored by former LSU and current Dallas Cowboys linebacker Bradie James. The meet honors James’ mother, who died of breast cancer in 2002.The gymnastics team has raised more than $120,000 since the meet’s inception and had a combined attendance of just more than 19,000 fans.The first Etta James Memorial Meet in 2008 was the largest crowd in LSU gymnastics history, when 7,717 people came to see the Tigers take on Alabama.”I feel like people take ownership of the event,” said gymnastics coach D-D Breaux. “The meet was about LSU gymnastics, but the whole event is about the     community.”Breaux also likes the fact the Etta James Meet helps mainly women in the Baton Rouge area.”So many cancer efforts are about the big picture,” Breaux said. “This is about Baton Rouge and our 10-parish area and the people that are in need of breast cancer awareness. For us to be a part of [James’] big picture is a blessing to us.”—-Contact Rob Landry at [email protected].