Anyone who has attended a college athletics event knows the student section is one of the most important factors in the game.
But what goes into the process of organizing student engagement?
Janson Jessop, the Assistant Director of Fan Engagement at OU, attributes a vital part of the student engagement process to having members of the volleyball team involved on campus.
“We’ve been having them go out on the south oval, hand out donuts, personally invite people to matches and hand out flyers,” Jessop said. “When we do little things like that, students see the team more and it makes them more visible.”
Jessop says it is a collective effort between him and the student engagement team when it comes to creating new ideas to promote OU volleyball, such as creating the idea of digs for donuts, where players pass out donuts to students who successfully get a dig when given the opportunity.
“We bounce ideas off each other. With digs for donuts we’re like, ‘how can we get the girls out there to do something more exciting than handing out flyers? Well maybe if they pass a volleyball to someone and they dig it, they get a donut and they get to promote their game and it makes a cool social video, it makes a better connection with the students and the team.’”
Jessop has a goal for each match, not for attendance numbers, but for a fun atmosphere.
“This team has a great personality,” Jessop said. “They work really hard and they play with a lot of joy. So, our goal, my goal for every match is to create a lot of joy in the arena and a great atmosphere for people to have fun.”
Last month, the fan engagement team reached one of their goals when OU played Texas at McCasland Field House on Sept. 22. OU’s student section record was broken with 695 students in attendance, which was strategically planned by Jessop and the student engagement team.
“In our early planning processes, we identified a few games where we thought we could break the record. UCLA was the first one that we thought we could really do it, and we came 33 students short of breaking the record,” Jessop said. “We knew Texas was going to get more students than UCLA. After that UCLA match, we collectively put our heads together and were like ‘alright we’re going to break the record this time, we’re going to do it.’”
While OU students are given free entry to attend home games, that proves not enough to entice some students to attend a volleyball game. Jessop says having awareness is a key factor in keeping students interested in attending games.
Jessop says he encourages students who have not attended an OU volleyball game to attend some of the home games for OU volleyball and experience a fun environment whilst watching the Sooners play.
“It’s a football school, so people come here for football all the time, but they don’t know that all of our other programs we have are really good or are really competitive and they can still have a ton of fun. There’s just as much fun at a volleyball game as there is at a football game,” Jessop said. “It’s really just making sure the word is out there, and visible on campus. Whether that’s through yard signs, banners, or social media posts there are a lot of different ways. We just want people to have eyeballs on the program, and know when we are playing.”