Increased fan support powers WNIT run

By the time the 2009-10 season ended for the USC women’s basketball team, the coaching staff noticed a startling trend during its team’s home games.

“[The coaches] used to look in the stands and there were maybe 100 people there for games,” said team manager Saphia Raymond. “They didn’t like that.”

Fandom · The Galen Groupies are the women’s basketball team’s fan base. The group hopes to inspire more attendance at the team’s games. - Courtesy of the Galen Groupies

So they did something about it. In an age when every university and athletics office has a marketing department that takes care of promoting their teams, the coaches of USC’s women’s basketball team decided to take matters into their own hands.

“It started last year, when the new coaching staff came in,” Raymond said. “USC coach [Michael] Cooper, [assistant] coach [Kelley] Gibson, and [associate head] coach [Ervin] Monier … When they came in, they said they wanted to take USC basketball to where it had been in the past.”

And to do that, they figured they would have to build fan support for home games.

“[The coaches] thought ‘We want to do something new, we want to bring more students in [to games],’” Raymond said. “They wanted to be proactive with marketing.”

Soon enough, an idea was hatched to create a Facebook page for fans attending the women’s basketball games.

Similar to how Trojan Fever represents fans of the men’s basketball team, they wanted a group that would represent supporters of the women’s basketball team.

They planned a Facebook page to provide news about the Women of Troy, and women’s basketball in general, including behind-the-scenes interviews with players from the squad, clips from the team’s road trips and exclusive coverage of the team.

All the fan organization needed was a name.

“The coaches came up with it,” said Raymond, who acts as the webpage’s main administrator. “I left work and they were like ‘We need to come up with a name for the group.’ I came in the next day and they were like ‘Galen Groupies!’ and I was like ‘Okay! That works!’”

After the webpage was deemed appropriate — that it avoided any NCAA compliance issues — Raymond and the coaches created the Facebook page and made their first post in October — just in time for basketball season.

Thus, the Galen Groupies were born.

Word spread quickly about the new fan base for the team. Friend requests were sent out to hundreds of USC students. Currently, the page has more than 500 friends.

Unfortunately, even though the program has pushed for increased attendance, the Galen Center’s seats remain mostly empty during the Women of Troy’s games. A large portion of the students who come are other athletes there to support their peers.

“[The Facebook page] helps some with all of the updates,” said junior guard Ashley Corral. “But there’s a big difference between getting on the computer and reading about us, and actually showing up to games. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but getting more fans is definitely something I think we should focus on.”

Before advancing to this year’s WNIT championship, no USC player had experienced the intense atmosphere of postseason play.

“Playing in the WNIT and seeing how much support each one of those schools had at home was eye-opening,” Corral said. “Toledo had over 7,000 fans there [for the WNIT championship game]. Here at USC, you would think we’d have a lot of fans at every single game … [But] we only get a handful of students [at our games].”

The apathy for women’s basketball at USC was especially evident during a home game against UCLA on Feb. 6.

Hundreds of UCLA students followed their team into the Galen Center, forming their own make-shift student section. Throughout the game, the Bruin faithful cheered and chanted with no USC student section to counter their spirit.

USC ended up losing a close game, 74-67.

It might have been listed as a home game for the Women of Troy, but the atmosphere didn’t reflect that. The Associated Press noted that UCLA “enjoyed a clear advantage in fan support among the 2,812 in attendance.”

Such a strong pro-UCLA fanbase likely provided the Bruins with a decisive advantage.

“Having a big home crowd would help us a lot,” Corral said. “When we play at Galen, it’s almost like we’re not even playing at home. Because no matter who we’re playing, it seems like they have more fans.”

In both of the last two seasons, the Women of Troy finished with a 19-12 mark during the regular season, but were not invited to the NCAA tournament.

But in their WNIT run this March, the Women of Troy showed promise for next season, marching all the way to the championship game before falling to Toledo 76-68 in front of its home court.

With four starters and nine of its top-10 scorers returning next season, the team will have a chance to make another deep postseason run. Perhaps the only missing piece is a wealth of support from fans.