Friday, June 30, 2023

Historical Information Made Available

Recently, the Official Twitter account for the UT Arlington Mavericks volleyball team post the following tweet:

Well let's just say, for a guy like me, this is Christmas. I've received media guides from the 1970's and '80's as yuletide gifts. I was not disappointed. What they've added has been a treasure trove of historical information. It has shattered some beliefs I thought I knew about the program. 

First for me, the team didn't always call Texas Hall home. The "multi-purpose" stage opened in 1965, almost a decade before the first women's program in 1973. If I had been exposed to that tidbit prior, it either didn't register or was lost to time as I've put on the years, but the team didn't play full-time in Texas Hall until 1985. From the program's inception to the end of the 1984 season, they played in the Activities Building, now the Maverick Activity Center, specifically the "yellow gym, gym 134" in the 1978 media guide.

The 1974 guide said they wanted to increase visibility of basketball and volleyball by playing a couple games/matches in front of the men's basketball team on the stage. But by 1977, there was no mention of that strategy.

As the team gained national notoriety and big name teams at home drew larger crowds, the decision was made to play at the Hall fulltime.

Speaking of big name schools, I was in the crowd of 2,018 on October 15, 2015 against Texas State. For whatever reason, I thought that was the largest on-campus crowd to view a UTA volleyball match. I thought it was an in-game announcement, but I likely misheard. When UTA was challenging the UT Austin Longhorns for the premiere program in the region in the late 1980's, the crowds were large for both schools on their respective campuses. On September 15, 1988, the largest on=campus crowd of 2,379 assembled at Texas Hall to watch the Longhorns defeat UTA.

But that Texas State match isn't second either, but third. The second highest attended match occurred in 1989. On September 23 of that year, 2,321 fans packed Texas Hall to watch the Mavericks defeat UT-Austin in a sweep, the first of two victories that year against the Austinians, the second being in the NCAA tournament to send UTA to the Final Four. It also avenged a five-set loss exactly one match earlier.

That match was also illustrative of a great stretch in attendance for the Mavericks, starting with the lone NCAA tournament match UTA hosted in 1987 up to the 1993 season, the Mavericks drew over 1,000 eleven times. College Park Center has achieved that feat ten times in the decade they started playing there. The lone anomaly was the 1992 season, where the match high attendance number was 614 (there was no box score for the home match against Wisconsin).

Average attendance is still generally higher at CPC though. The 1987 squad averaged 591 in the regular season. 1988 was 921 and '89 was 819. The programs decline started in 1990 with 406 fans. That surprised me a little, still so fresh off a Final Four appearance. The first five matches did not eclipse 300, despite the prior success and before the losing record was prominent.

1991 saw a slight increase with 464. Despite winning the conference, the 1992 saw less than 400. 1993 rebounded with a high 400 average. After that, all but one season in the remaining 1990's were in the 200's. There was another slight rebound at the turn of the century and again at the turn of the decade in 2010, but it wasn't until the Sun Belt Conference tenure that UTA really increased consistently. They have averaged over 700 four times and in the 600's twice more. That gave UTA their longest string of attendance but didn't equal the high of 1988 and '89. 2022's average of 767 is fourth best all-time, at least with the known info currently available. I am skeptical that any season in the MAC would average above 4-500.

While I don't have complete data for the 1988/89 men's basketball season, the average for the seven of 12 games I do have is 935. Of the five games I don't have, two occurred over the break, a traditionally lower attended time, and none are against teams that typically draw crowds. That means the 970 the volleyball team drew in the same academic year (including the 1,500 plus for the NCAA tourney game) was the highest team sport attendance average that year for UTA.

Lastly, the two earliest media guides added to UTAMAVS.com are a combined collection of women's sports in one, 1974-75 and 1977-78. From the inception of the women's programs in 1973, women's swimming was in the mix. Near the end of the 1970's, the men's team was disbanded as the Athletic Department and P.E. Department were in a constant struggle for use of the pool, in the P.E. Building. Likely, the women's swimming team was disbanded at the same time. I had no inkling that UTA ever fielded a swimming team. That hit me similar to not always playing in Texas Hall for the volleyball team.

Additionally, that 1974-75 guide quoted Jody Conradt, architect and matriarch of UTA's women's sports programs, as establishing more sports, some that wouldn't come around until a few years ago. "We'll have out team sports - volleyball, basketball, swimming and softball," she said. "But I plan to give attention to some individual sports programs such as badminton, track, tennis and golf."

That The 1977-1978 said the first women's track team came in the previous year. I have no record of any of the other three starting prior, but have women's tennis in 1983 and women's golf in 2018. Those last two being the two newest sport offerings at UTA.

I find the whole section interesting, so here's a screenshot of it:



This has been a great dump of historical information. I have been able to collect a great deal of media guides for my personal collection, but volleyball has been hard to come by. The only one I have I acquired as a student. I learned that the other sports will follow the volleyball program in publishing this historical record. I'm already anxiously waiting.
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