Resiliency in Regina
The Manitoba Bisons football team locked horns with the Regina Rams on Saturday and emerged with a 49-46 victory. The win helps keep the Bisons’…
The Manitoba Bisons football team locked horns with the Regina Rams on Saturday and emerged with a 49-46 victory. The win helps keep the Bisons’…
A week ago, I wrote a sports piece entitled “Build it and they will come ,” which discussed what Bison Sports has been doing to try and encourage fans to come out to sporting events. In this piece, I stated it’s also up to students to do their part and show up to the games.
This past Friday night saw the University of Manitoba Bisons football team get their first home win of the season, soundly beating the Regina Rams by a score of 34-19.
It didn’t take Jesse Walker long to figure out that football was his calling. A fairly gifted soccer player growing up, Walker stepped onto the gridiron for the first time midway through grade eight, and the rest is history.
After a slow start to the season, the University of Manitoba Bisons football squad has won their last two consecutive games, and head into the Thanksgiving bye week tied for second in the conference with a 3-2 record.
When I learned that Bison Sports is dismayed that their best-attended football games draw a mere quarter of the student body out to Investors Group Field, it brought tears to my eyes. The sky became suddenly overcast, and out of nowhere I heard the plaintive strains of the slow movement from Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto ringing out from the world’s tiniest violin.
In an article in the Sept. 30 issue of the Manitoban, Mike Still wrote, “while Bison Sports is working hard to create an optimal fan experience, it’s still up to the students and fans to do their part and actually show up.”
He expressed a similar view in an editorial back in March, describing attendance at Bisons home games as “abysmal” and “pathetic.”
The University of Manitoba Bisons moved up to number six-ranked in the country with their 42-32 win in Edmonton last weekend against the Unversity of Alberta Golden Bears. They welcome a University of Regina Rams team that has yet to get into the win column this season, most recently losing to the number one-ranked University of Calgary Dinos by a score of 72-8.
In September 2013, the University of Manitoba Bisons football team played their first ever home game in the newly built Investors Group Field (IGF). The field has a capacity of 33,422, but the Bisons saw only 6,435 fans come out to support the herd. Unfortunately, that number is the most that Manitoba has ever had come out to watch a Bison game at IGF.
The University of Manitoba Bisons football team headed into Friday night’s game against Alberta desperate for a win after two disappointing losses against UBC and Calgary. After trailing by nine at halftime, the Bisons would complete a second half comeback, winning 42-32.
This past Saturday, the Manitoba Bisons football team fell three points short in a 51-48 loss to the high-flying University of British Columbia (UBC) Thunderbirds, in a game where the herd was primarily playing catch-up.