Three Ways to Fix BC Game Day

Baseball games are long and there is lots of downtime. In the pros there are lots of promotions that feel that space to keep fans interested or at least amused. Larger colleges will do similar promotions or contests on a smaller scale.

Berea does not do any of that which leads to some very boring and quiet game days. How can this be fixed? Well fear not because a group of experts, the Berea College Athletics student employees, have determined a three cost effective ways to make game day at the BC Sports Complex more exciting and engaging. I also believe some of these promotions could provide incentive to the team. The first thing that would be changed is the old scoreboard. Berea used to use a scoreboard that had to have the runs, hits, and errors manually hung up. When Berea switched to a new digital scoreboard they left the old one up in the outfield. Currently it is just a large blue colored piece of wood. The change I suggest making is allowing a local restaurant to advertise on it and if a player hits a ball that goes all the way to the sign all fans in attendance get a free appetizer or ten percent off of their order. Berea has only hit two home runs at home this year so maybe knowing that they could win their friends, family, and significant others in the crowd some free breadsticks might encourage them to work on hitting some dingers. Total cost of adding advertisement: $30 (paint). My second suggestion is adding in a mascot race. You may be reading this and thinking “Noah, Berea doesn’t have a single mascot costume how could we do a mascot race?”. My plan involves Berea adding not one but five costumed mascots. It would be easy to have a single Mountaineer mascot like West Virginia which is just a man dressed like Daniel Boone but we can do better. The costumes are as follows: A bumble bee, an ocean, a mountain, and two ears. When you put that together you get bee sea mountain ears. Fans could cheer on their favorite mascot and each one would win the fans a different prize if they win. For example, if the bee wins the race fans get a discount on honey at the farm store. Happy fans cheer more which again may will the Berea team to more success. Total cost of adding a mascot race: $96 (five costumes). My third suggestion is theme nights. The Bowling Green Hot Rods, a minor league team who has won several awards for their promotions, provide a great example of how to use a limited budget to create fun nights for fans. An easy theme night would be an 80s night. Berea already does a decades dance so why not merge the two. Invite fans to dress up and come to the game before the dance. Only 80s music will be played and the players can pick walkout songs from the 80s. There could be a costume contest and the winner gets a free Berea t-shirt. Total cost of that theme night: $10 (shirt cost).