Gauchos look for record soccer crowd

By COLBY FRAZIER — Oct. 2, 2009

When the UC Santa Barbara men’s soccer team takes on the Indiana Hoosiers tonight at Harder Stadium, they hope to draw the largest collegiate soccer audience in NCAA history.

Sure, Harder Stadium (17,000 capacity) is not the Los Angeles Coliseum (93,607 capacity), but it’s not supposed to be. It’s Harder Stadium and at Harder Stadium, soccer is king.

The current attendance record for a soccer match was set on Sept. 27, 1987 when 12,224 people watched a match between Fresno State and San Francisco. The next best mark is 11,075, which was set on Oct. 17, 2008 in San Luis Obispo when the Gauchos took on Cal Poly.

Despite having played in four of the top 10 most heavily attended regular season Division 1 NCAA soccer matches of all time, and hosting three of them, the Gauchos have yet to draw a crowd larger than 10,000. According to a news release from the UCSB Athletic Department, the largest soccer crowd to ever assemble in Harder Stadium is 9,749, who watched a double-overtime, 0-0 tie last Nov. 5 against Cal Poly.

The Gauchos’ largest crowd this season came on Sept. 22 in an exhibition match against the Mexican under-17 national team.

The No. 11 ranked Gauchos, who have a 6-2-1 record, last faced No. 8 Indiana in the 2004 College Cup Final, which the Hoosiers won on penalty kicks. The Gauchos’ 2004 team will be honored tonight, as will the school’s 1979 men’s water polo team, which captured the NCAA title that year.

The game starts at 8 p.m. and is being broadcast nationally on the Fox Soccer Channel. Tickets cost $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and $3 for children under 13. For groups of 10 or more, tickets are $3 for adults and $1 for children.

The Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is giving free tickets away, which can be obtained by calling Evelyn Cabadas at 621-7006.

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UCSB soccer team should choose historic greatness over mediocrity : 10/2/2009

It would be an incredibly redeeming gesture while elevating the UCSB soccer team to World greatness if they united with Indiana and refused to play in demand for the long overdue independent, fully funded and fully empowered 9/11 investigation. If they play the match, it will be forgotten within a week whether they win or lose. But if they protest the match before an audience of 17,000 and demand the imperative 9/11 investigation whose nonexistence has thusfar cost the lives of 5000+ American soldiers and unknown 100's of 1000's of civilian lives in illegal preemptive quagmire wars, the match will be eternally historic. UCSB is a mediocrity mill but the UCSB soccer team has the opportunity to render it something better tonight.

Neil

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