CAMPING out, regardless of what people may think, has not always been the method for obtaining entry into men's basketball games. As a former student and current Associate Director of Athletics for Facilities and Operations, Jason Bauman can attest to the old ticketing system's downfalls. Students once dropped off a self-addressed envelope at the Newcomb Ticket Office and then wait for a week, hoping to get a ticket in the mail. After that, the system involved swiping into U-Hall with a student ID, causing the walkway to U-Hall to turn into a campground, with extension cords running into Onesty Hall to attach to space heaters outside in student's tents. However, the Athletics Department has finally developed SHOTS: the best student ticketing system anywhere in college basketball.
The self-addressed envelope era had its drawbacks. Primarily, students didn't want to go to Newcomb and drop off an envelope, so student attendance at basketball games suffered. Additionally, the tickets sent to students were General Admission, and lead to many students selling their tickets outside of U-Hall to strangers. Finally, if a person could not find another person to take his or her ticket in the event that they could not attend, then it was simply wasted -- leaving an empty seat at U-Hall.
Laden with fire hazards and freezing weather conditions, the camping out era was also incompatible with Virginia Basketball. The many tents pitched outside of U-Hall served to scare away many students who would have otherwise attended basketball games. Jason Bauman said that in 1981, at the peak of Virginia basketball supremacy, many open student seats remained at the UNC game because the large crowds of tents outside of the entrance scared away students who wished to attend but thought it impossible to obtain a seat.
The new Student Hoops Online Ticketing System, SHOTS, solves all of these problems. For many students, SHOTS is an elusive creature whose intricacies can never be understood, but the system works with surprising simplicity. First, every student has the ability to request a ticket one week prior to games. Students are then awarded tickets based on previous attendance history, giving priority to those students with higher attendance while still reserving a certain percentage for newcomers, so that all students may have access to Men's Basketball. That is basically it.
With the opening of John Paul Jones Arena, a new addition to SHOTS further encourages high attendance to not only basketball games, but also to less popular sports such as soccer, lacrosse, baseball, tennis, volleyball, and wrestling. The system of timed entry, coupled with the orange Passport, evenly distributes fans over 10 entry groups into men's basketball games, spaced in five minute intervals, with a majority of people in each entry those students with the largest number of "Sabre Points" accumulated based on attendance to prior sporting events. A small number in each section remain available to all students, chosen at random in the system, so that no student is eliminated from the possibility of great seats within John Paul Jones considering that all students pay the same athletics fee. The philosophy behind this procedure is not to disadvantage those students who are highly dedicated to sports, but to encourage attendance from all students, Bauman said.
SHOTS eliminates the problem of empty seats in JPJ as well, with the availability of the "Cancel Ticket" option on the SHOTS website. This feature allows students to release their ticket back out into the "Print on Demand" pool, from which all students can print tickets if they are available up until game time. Even with very popular games like the one against Duke a few weeks ago, tickets remained available on demand just a few hours before the game, allowing as many students as possible to attend.
Camping out for a month to see a basketball game does not make you a fan. Going to Virginia Athletics Events makes you a fan, and that is exactly what the new Orange Passport and the timed entry system accomplishes. SHOTS allows the most dedicated fans to get the best seats and gives the largest number of students ticket opportunities via the internet. It protects our student section with its "student only tickets" that include the name of the ticket holder, making them impossible to sell as in years past. Finally, SHOTS ensures that students don't have to sleep outside for a month just get into a basketball game with defined entry groups. SHOTS is, by far, the greatest ticketing system to date, regardless of how much students and alumni complain, and there is no reason for even the slightest reform in the near future.
Greg Crapanzano's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at gcrapanzano@cavalierdaily.com.
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