With a slow start to the season, Syracuse saw a lack of support from fans early on. Not only was attendance down, but the fans were also virtually silent.

But as the Orange has picked it up in the second half of the season, fans have begun to support the team. Syracuse’s most recent home victory over Clemson marked the largest attendance all season in a single home match, tallying 293 people.

There is a host of reasons behind the fans beginning to back the team, but perhaps the biggest is that Syracuse is winning games.

“It’s good to see,” middle blocker Lindsay McCabe said. “I think that we expect when we are winning people are going to come. We got to keep winning to have people come.”

The largest home crowd on record for the Orange since 2007 was against Notre Dame in 2011, which had 585 in attendance. On Wednesday night, Syracuse will face the same opponent — this time in the Carrier Dome. It is the final time the team will play in the Dome this season.

As of Tuesday, the team’s average home attendance for the season is at 299 per game, which puts it on pace to break its previous record of 294 in 2010. The team has had 13 games thus far this season, and in 2010 it played 10. Attendance records have been kept since 2007.

All season long, head coach Leonid Yelin has said that getting the school to come out and support the team is his goal. From day one he stressed the importance of developing a fan base. Now that the team has started to string together wins, Yelin is beginning to see his wishes come to fruition.

The players have noticed a steady fan base is starting to develop as the awareness of the team increases.

“When we see fans are coming, it is making us feel better and lets us know that we are doing better this season,” middle blocker Monika Salkute said.

But Yelin knows that to keep these fans coming, the team must continue to win. After Syracuse’s Oct. 27 victory against Clemson, Yelin stressed in a team meeting that the fans in attendance do not come to watch losers.

“No one wants to come watch a losing team,” said defensive specialist Melina Violas, “so now that we are winning and we are getting more fans, it is awesome.”

Yelin said another major component of the increased fan base could be having the games televised. He believes that the games being put on Time Warner Cable SportsChannel has had some positive effects.

“I think a lot of people don’t even know (that the team exists),” Yelin said. “The more exposure that we are going to have, the more people that will know, the more people will come.”

The players feel fans are more interested in coming to the games when they are played in the Dome. The Dome is something every SU student can identify with.

“They are more interested about the place that we are playing, so the Dome is a wow (factor),” Salkute said.

Though many of the team’s supporters are new, they have personality. They seem to know the team and are even calling the players by their nicknames. It is apparent that they are genuinely interested in the sport as well as the players themselves.

Regardless of the reasoning behind the increased fan base, player morale is on the rise. It is increasing the players’ energy and helping them improve as a whole.

“It definitely just brings up our energy,” outside hitter Nicolette Serratore said. “It is really hard to cheer between every point, it takes a lot of energy, so when we have a lot of people backing us up it just gives you that extra adrenaline. It is really good to have that support there.”

Published on November 6, 2013 at 2:20 am

Contact Eric: esriter@syr.edu