This year’s new student section has given students a more unified space to cheer for the football team, but also has sacrificed some of the comforts and advantages that the old student section provided.
Utah Tech University moved the student section this year separate from the rest of the general seating. This new student section, located behind the south end zone, gives the student section a more unique feel as it is now truly a section designated solely for students. However, the location of the seating on one end of the stadium can lower the energy levels in the stands when the action is on the far end of the field.
“I feel like we’re too spread out, so it’s sometimes hard to bounce off each other’s energy but besides that it’s been good,” Jared Cowgill, a sophomore business major from Layton, said.
The new section does give fans a much greater opportunity to be closer to the action when play is on the end of the field near the seating. In the past, students were often relatively far from the play on the field, but the new seating removes this problem. When Utah Tech scores on the end of the field, students can feel much more connected with the players in comparison to the previous student section.
“I thought it’s been cooler to the players and the action on the field,” Seth Moore, a freshman biology major from Allegany, New York, said.
While students have enjoyed being closer to the action and being able to cheer on the team, the physical location of the seating is not optimal. The seating puts students in the sun much more than the previous seating, where it had some shade. This can be extremely tough, especially during the early fall games when it is still around 100 degrees in St. George.
Students have also expressed their frustration with the bleachers that the new student section has, because much of the previous section was fitted with more padded seating.
“I thought the concrete slabs were uncomfortable, but I’d take those back in a heartbeat,” Josh Phillips, a senior finance major from Pleasant Grove, said.
While some students have expressed their frustration with the new seating, there’s still a lot of optimism for what it could become in the future. This is the first year for the new seating, and students can only expect it to get better over time. Just as the general seating has gotten better as Utah Tech has continued to grow as a university, the same can be expected for the new student section.
However, the student section will always have some downsides. The new seating lacks shade to stay out of the sun due to the physical location of the section, but it does give students a tradeoff to be closer to the action on the field.
There have been mixed reviews of the new student section on campus, but time will tell whether it is a success.
