By: Aaron Robinson
The Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey team has made two national championship appearances in the last 6 seasons, and have placed numerous players into professional hockey organizations, yet there are teams on campus who have been more successful over that same span.
In this same six seasons the women’s tennis program has won 5 consecutive MAAC Championships, and they will compete for a sixth in the spring. The women’s rugby team has won three national championships during this same exact time span.
“If you look over at Paula (Miller) that shelf that they have over there is about to fall on top of her because they have so many trophies,” stated Becky Carlson, the head coach of the women’s rugby team, on the success of the women’s tennis team.
These few teams though are not the only ones who have seen success in recent years.
Tricia Fabbri’s women’s basketball team has won the MAAC in three of the last four seasons, and in the last six seasons has been to the NCAA tournament four times. The team even made a trip all the way to the Sweet 16 in 2016 before they were defeated by the eventual national champions. The following season in 2017, the team was so successful, they earned a 9 seed in the NCAA tournament, the highest ever seed in program history. After defeating Miami in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Fabbri’s squad lost to UConn, the most dominant program in women's basketball history, for a right to get to back to back Sweet 16’s.
“The myth is that ‘if you win people will come to your games’... well, we win all the time, women’s basketball wins all the time, so how do you explain that, because that is not the case,” stated Carlson emphatically.
Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey currently is third in the entire country in attendance when it comes to percent capacity for their arena. They fill it on average 97.78% each night they have a home game. The hockey arena on campus holds 3,386 people, the basketball arena holds 3,254 people, so they are roughly identical in size and capacity.
Women’s hockey fills the same hockey arena on an average of 12.73 percent. But what is interesting is that when you look at accumulated attendance for the year, women’s ice hockey ranks seventh in the nation with an accumulated attendance of 5,173 people just this year alone.
Women’s basketball fills their arena on an average of 26.80 percent which is 85th in the country and men’s basketball clocks in at 36.50 percent which is good for 201st in the country.
So even though Tricia Fabbri’s squad has been just as successful as any other team on campus, their attendance numbers are not up to par with other sports teams, specifically men’s ice hockey, and even men’s basketball who despite having never been to the NCAA tournament, still manages to fill their arena up almost halfway on most nights.
“What the students care about in terms of sports is a reflection of the universities values," stated Carlson. “If all you see in your dorms or all you see in your emails is in invitation to ice hockey, you are going to believe that that’s all that’s out there.”
“You hear everything about hockey, and you don’t really hear about the other sports,” said Layla Rodriguez, a junior on the women’s tennis team.
This lack of awareness of other sports was never more evident than when students voiced their assumptions about Quinnipiac sports and Quinnipiac athletes on the quad in early December.
But again, why do students have such a lack of awareness for the athletes and sports that are on campus?
“I think the students and society as a whole just has less of an interest when it comes to women's sports,” said Kenzie Lancaster, a senior on the women’s ice hockey team.
But if this was a societal issue, then the women's ice hockey team would not be sixth in the country in accumulated attendance.
What that number says is that people on campus do care about hockey. Both the men’s and women’s hockey team are top 10 in the nation in at least one facet of attendance, weather it be percent capacity, or in the women’s hockey team’s case, accumulated attendance. The same can not be said for women’s basketball or even men’s basketball as well as other sports teams on campus.
Becky Carlson has her reasons as to why students on this campus seem to simply be uninterested in many of the sports teams on campus.
“I think our student population is a smaller, not diverse, liberal arts school with a focus on things like physicians, and doctors and lawyers and nursing," stated Carlson. “I don’t think a lot of the students come here specifically for the sports or to be sports fanatics in the same way that they would if they are interested in going to a Notre Dame or a Texas or an Ohio State.”
Maybe Quinnipiac just has to come to terms with the fact that student interest will never be what it is at other big time sports schools. There are some though, who believe that Quinnipiac can do a better job to increase student initiative to come to sporting events.
“They make the hockey games fun, they have the music, they have the food, and the giveaways,” stated Rodriguez. “I think if they did the same for other sports, although it might be harder, it would be more entertaining and students would want to come out and see the games.”
“I think the giveaways that they do at our games are good, but maybe they could make the experience more fun for the students, then they would be more interested in the games,” added women’s ice hockey captain Melissa Samoskevich.
The athletes seem to have a grip on what needs to be done, one can only wonder if the administration will follow suit and if student interest in other sports will ever reach anything near that of ice hockey. For that, you will have to wait and see.
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