On Thurs. Sept. 15, USF Athletics hosted its first outreach event at the USF St. Petersburg Chick-fil-A. The goal of the event was to garner more interest from satellite campuses to attend football games. Football trivia and prizes prompted students to attend more football games.
Marcy Lanoue, coordinator of corporate ticket sales and external operations, said when USF Tampa reaches out to students at satellite campuses, “it makes the university more collegiate. It’s necessary because it increases student life and brings a sense of community.”
Lanoue decided to hold the first outreach event at the largest satellite campus, USFSP, which has about 6,000 students. She said Thursday’s event turnout was a good sign to reach out to the other campuses.
For her third visit to USFSP, Lanoue said she was “absolutely amazed at how interactive the students were. They were respectful and had huge interest in participating in the trivia.”
“Now we have presence. We feel more connected with the athletics program and the Tampa campus,” Lanoue said.
Lanoue said this is a critical year. Her goal to is to fill the student section on Saturday’s game, and she reminds students the football players look to that section when they are playing.
“The loudest people are in the student section—the more students, the better performance,” Lanoue said.
For Mark Lombardi-Nelson, vice president of Student Government, school spirit is a campus-wide thing.
“We’re a growing campus, student life is growing every year … we need to have more people at these games,” Lombardi-Nelson said. “We need the spirit of USF Tampa.”
A few years ago, “buses [to the games] were too expensive because only four people rode them,” Lombardi-Nelson said. For future bus rides to football games, he said he wants the buses to be filled with 40 to 60 students.
He would like to see students ride a bus by the next home game, Sat., Sept. 24, versus the University of Texas at El Paso.
“Hopefully the next home game,” he said. “We’re definitely working on it.”
For the upcoming homecoming game against the University of Cincinnati, on Sat., Oct. 22, at noon, “we might need multiple buses,” Lombardi-Nelson said.
Lombardi said events like the one at Chick-fil-A could boost overall spirit and increase student life participation. It is important to Lombardi-Nelson to spread the school spirit, and he has thought of painting the USF Bulls logo on the wall in the Coquina Club to give students a sense of “home,” he said.
