GDT Fort Wayne

[sealhall74]

I might have to retract my statement about Omaha just a bit. They are making a little noise this year:

[tweet]551205489539682304[/tweet]

But I too did the USD roadtrip last year and I know just how easy that drive up I29 is. How many of these fans will make the trip to Macomb? ZERO. ZILCH. IF THEY PROVE ME WRONG, LEATHERNECK NATION, WE NEED TO COME WITH OUR SUNDAY BEST. ADVANTAGE LEATHERNECKS. GET READY FOR 2-0!

[wiu712]

Attendance at Friday night's games:

IPFW at Western = 679. Western won 73-67.
Nebraska-Omaha at South Dakota = 1,425. Omaha won 86-77.
South Dakota State at Denver = 1,786. Denver won 76-69.
Oral Roberts at North Dakota State = 2,610. NDSU won 72-66.

It doesn't seem like Western has been as aggressive with their marketing and promotions as in past years.

The Friday night game with IPFW would have been a good one to get some more people out since there were no competing events going on with Macomb High School.

A.D. Tommy Bell has talked about improving the game-day atmosphere for football. Wonder if there are similar thoughts to doing the same thing for basketball ????

The concession area at Western Hall is not very attractive.

Games without a Pep Band are another problem. I don't know how other schools manage to have a band over the semester break ??? I was listening to the Women's BB game at IPFW on Friday night, and there was a band playing there.

The contests and competitions during the timeouts are well done and keep the crowd engaged.

[sealhall74]

It doesn't seem like Western has been as aggressive with their marketing and promotions as in past years.

Just like they did for football with Rick Springfield, we need an indoor Western Hall concert before or maybe after the Sunday Superbowl game with NDSU. I mentioned "Sunday Best" in a previous post. I got to thinking about that. Is there a band Sunday Best out there? Not exactly, but there is a good country duo called Sundy Best. They are touring around then and just happen to have an open date on Feb 1. They both played sports in college so may bite with an offer if we could afford them.

http://www.sundybest.net/home/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundy_Best

Not sure how people feel about country/folk/r&b genre but these guys sound pretty good to me and just about my speed for a Sunday afternoon.

[meganeck]

kind of a disappointing crowd.

If Mo and Miklusak keep scoring like they have been, team will be a lot better than people thought, esp., with the way Jabari has been playing lately.

Glad to hear Remy has been cleared to play, sounds like they will slowly work him back into the game action.

[ST_Lawson]

Games without a Pep Band are another problem. I don't know how other schools manage to have a band over the semester break ??? I was listening to the Women's BB game at IPFW on Friday night, and there was a band playing there.

For many schools in the conference, the majority of their students come from relatively close. If you look at the schools, most of them are located in a fairly large city:
Denver, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Fargo, Omaha, Tusla

The exceptions are South Dakota, South Dakota State, and ourselves. In the case of the SD schools, they're both within an hour of Sioux Falls and USD is within a half hour of Sioux City, IA.

I would bet that the majority of the students (and pep band members) for nearly every Summit League school come from within an hour of their school.

However, with Western, that isn't the case. The majority of our pep band members come from the Chicago area, suburbs, with a few from the QC area, Springfield, Peoria area, etc.

Asking students to drive 2-4 hours (or take a 3 hour train ride) to Macomb, to be paid $10, not be able to stay in dorms (so they'd have to stay in a hotel or something), then turn around and go right back home...it's just not going to happen. The only way that they'd be able to have enough people is if the school was paying closer to $100 for people to attend, plus opening up the dorms for students to stay the night in.

I've also attempted to get enough alumni interested to be able to put together a band of alumni and current members who might be able to come down for a game during break, but I've only ever been able to get 10-15 people interested for any specific date (at most), and that's probably half of what we'd need to sound at all decent.

Unfortunately, our location just kinda kills our ability to make something like this work.

[wiu712]

In past years, Western Athletics has brought in a local high school band to play at some of the games during the 4-week semester break. I can remember that Macomb High School and West Prairie had their bands at Western Hall for a game.

Former Pep Band Director Doug Philips had been working on a CD (or today's digital equivalent) of the Western Pep Band playing. It would include things like "Hot Time", "Let's Go 'Necks", "Eat 'em Up", etc. But he moved on before that project was completed.

The recorded music that is played before the game leaves a lot to be desired. A recording of the Western Band playing would be a big improvement.