Diamond Addendum

The transition between the outline of the last post and the written word left off a very important point that applies to both the baseball and soft squads at UT Arlington. I initially thought I'd add the info into its own comment below the post, but there's a lot to it and its deserving of its own blog entry.

With the struggles the two teams have experienced the last few years, especially since they downgraded conferences from an RPI perspective, there has been a very notable metric that suffered this year, reversing a decade climb.

In 2024, the baseball team averaged 378 fans, the third straight decline in attendance, discounting the COVID year where every game drew 314 in the box score. It was the lowest since 2014's 352. Their time in the Sun Belt was generally positive for fans in the seats, nearly doubling the totals the team saw while in the Southland Conference. The highest year was 618 spectators per game in 2017. 2019 saw 591 and 2020 drew 606 fans before COVID cancelled the remainder of the schedule. 

Attendance High

With the Seattle match in the books, the UT Arlington volleyball squad concluded its home schedule for the 2023 season. While the conference portion has contained a bit of a disappointment, there team has set a record that I'll end the post with. 

First, a mild recap. The team held its own against the majority of teams they should have. The earned a road sweep over Utah Valley, road wins against Seattle (3-1), Southern Utah (3-2) and an upset over UT Rio Grande Valley (3-1). They had home wins over California Baptist (3-0), Tarleton (3-2), Utah Valley (3-1) and Seattle (3-0).

The had a few losses to teams that the Mavericks are superior to on paper. A road and home loss to Stephen F. Austin (0-3 and 1-3 respectively) along with home losses to Grand Canyon and UTRGV (1-3 in both) weren't unexpected. However, UTA was upset twice and it is really putting a damper in the standings for the Mavs. Abilene Christian and Utah Tech followed the same formula as the Mavericks went up 2-0, before losing the last three sets. The set scores for the ACU match were 25-19, 25-13, 20-25, 22-25, 15-17 while the Trailblazers were 25-21, 25-22, 19-25, 13-25 and 10-15.