CSUN Volleyball Not a Hot Ticket

Cal State Northridge, also known in major college sports circles as Cal State Who? , finally crashed a big party, the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Final Four tournament, joining mega-powers UCLA, Penn State and Ohio State in this weekend’s championship event.

And although the rush of CSUN students for tickets that went on sale Tuesday didn’t exactly knock the Student Union off its foundation, it would be unfair to say all students walked past the ticket booth without slowing down.

Several rode bicycles past the booth without slowing down.

CSUN’s first-ever entry into an NCAA Division I Final Four championship actually has two things going against it. First, the sport is volleyball, which has always attracted a loud, boisterous and really small following of fans. The administrators of UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, which can seat as many as 12,000 spectators, expect no more than 3,500 for the event.

And second, this is Cal State Northridge, a commuter school that last year held a protest rally against tuition increases that drew fewer than 100 students from the more than 28,000 enrolled.

CSUN has actually been among the national leaders in attendance in volleyball for the past three years--which translates, however, to only slightly more than 1,000 fans per match. But even that moderate level of interest was not evident on the first day of ticket sales for a prestigious national championship.

When the ticket booth opened at 8 a.m., five or six students sauntered over and paid $18 for two-day tickets.

The rush then tapered off.

Six hours later, fewer than 20 tickets had been sold. By the end of the day, the total reached about 50.

In the Student Union building that houses the ticket office, only one 8-by-4-inch shred of paper--held tenuously to a wooden post by two scraps of masking tape--announced the event.

All day, hundreds of students streamed past the sign and the booth, heading for nearby restrooms or an ice cream stand or the adjacent Mercantile Exchange, a modest coffee shop that will exchange a cup of its steaming black liquid for 75 cents.

Several students breezed through the building still pedaling their bikes. And one young woman stepped very quickly past the ticket booth, so quickly in fact that she collided heavily with a blind man and his seeing-eye dog. After a quick apology, she vanished into the flowing crowd.

John Rebeck, a sophomore, was among the few who slowed and then actually walked to the ticket window. And he promptly purchased two tickets for a movie this weekend on campus.

“Volleyball? NCAA? That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” he said.

“Will I go? Nope. Not a chance. I have no interest in volleyball.”

Marzel Neckien and Justin Tanous, both sophomores who said they were regulars at the team’s matches this year, said they came to buy the NCAA tickets.

“But I haven’t heard anyone talking about it,” said Neckien. “It’s kind of sad. There’s no school spirit here.”

“None,” echoed Tanous.

Both then walked away without buying tickets. Perhaps they knew the tickets would still be available today on campus and Friday and Saturday at UCLA.

There were some fans. Senior Andrew Bencze and junior Karri Kirsch happily handed over their $18 to see the Matadors play for the national championship.

“I’ve been to every volleyball match here in four years and most of the matches on the road,” Bencze said.

“I’ve been to every match in the last three years,” Kirsch said.

That, of course, makes them special.

“The players recognize us and say hi to us before the matches,” Bencze said.