UH fans becoming friendly

The large student turnout out for Hawaii’s 41-18 football victory Saturday could be traced to head coach Nick Rolovich’s plea this spring.

In a scene that could have been lifted from a Francis Ford Coppola movie, Rolovich summoned the social leaders of the fraternities and sororities to discuss how to attract more students to Rainbow Warriors games. There had been preliminary talks, but that gathering in the football conference room produced a surprising revelation.

“To be quite honest, I had no idea who he was when he came up to me,” said Brandon Euyoque, who was the social chairman for Tau Kappa Epsilon, of his previous dealings with Rolovich. “I really thought he was part of the marketing system. I only knew him as Nick. It was, ‘Hey, Nick, how’s it going?’ I was talking to him for a good month. When he met with us in this really nice conference room, I was like, ‘OK, maybe he’s not marketing. Maybe he has something to do with athletics. He had an assistant with him, and right then it clicked: ‘Aw, shoot, he’s the head coach and I didn’t even realize it.’ ”

But in this situation, Rolovich had marketing concerns. To the group, Rolovich asked: How can student attendance be increased at UH home games?

Euyoque, who graduated in May, said Greek Life would be willing to help.

The first hurdle was to address a tailgate fiasco a few years ago that led to the dramatic decline in student attendance. During that tailgate, police and stadium security broke up a rowdy student tailgate by shutting the music and dispersing the participants. At the time, leaders believed they could have quelled the commotion if they had been allowed to use the sound system to address the rowdy students.

Euyoque met with UH marketing director Brad Motooka and Aloha Stadium sales and marketing specialist Samantha Spain. They agreed to a contingency plan in which the students would police themselves during the pregame tailgate parties. Aloha Stadium provided more portable bathrooms in the parking lot.

“We teamed together,” Euyoque said. “Enemies became friends. We worked together to make the tailgate a little more safer. We tried our best to get everyone to mob mentality into the stadium to enjoy the game.”

Motooka and Spain also gave the fraternities and sororities tickets to distribute to alumni who could not afford to pay for regularly priced tickets. “They ended up bringing another crowd in,” Euyoque said. “It was marketing all over the place.”

Euyoque said the student section focused on playfully heckling the Western Carolina players and entertaining themselves, such as starting the cell phone light wave.

“If you can entertain the students while they’re at the game and actually have them entertain the rest of the crowd, people are going to want to attend the games because it’s going to be fun,” Euyoque said.

Rolovich praised the student involvement. “That was good to see,” Rolovich said.

Euyoque said: “The general consensus is that was the greatest tailgate we ever had. The general consensus from the students is we’ve never seen a football game like that. We’re going to keep that momentum going, and go from here.”