By: Madelynn Lockwood, Features Editor
C-Block is once again hosting Club Night at the LECOM Harborcenter for the Griff’s hockey game this Friday, Feb. 9. This event is meant to help fill the stands with different student organizations all in support of the Griffs for their matchup against the Bentley Falcons. Club Night is being sponsored by Tim Hortons; according to GoGriffs.com, there will be a post-game gift card giveaway for all fans, while supplies last.
All club leaders have been extended an invitation to bring their organizations to help C-Block in their mission of creating the best fan and player environment. This promotional night is hoping to get students who typically do not attend athletic events to the game, expose them to the fun environment and create excitement for these students to come back. The student organizations will be tasked with creating a poster that garners their name that will be either held up or taped to the boards to represent their club.
These posters will be alongside the usual C-Block posters that contain fun messages for the Griffs or jabs at the other team. Regardless of the message, they are always absolutely riddled with puns, and these posters are just one of the ways C-Block supports the Griffs. Some signs hold sayings like “Deck ‘em, Decker,” in reference to senior defenseman Jackson Decker or “C U later,” playing on our new university status and giving a nice and friendly goodbye to our defeated visitors. C-Block Secretary Kaitlin O’Meara’s favorite sign is the one that dons the saying “St. Peter Canisius, pray for us.”
On the flip side, many of these signs are directed at our opposition; those are the ones that show off the club’s most creative digs. The club spends some time before any game doing some research on the incoming team to drum up some ideas for signs, and they go through their archives to find old posters that they might be able to reuse. Within their inventory, three executive board members highlighted “Niagara: Accepting Canisius rejects since 1870” as their favorite anti-Niagara sign. Other favorites include “Hey Holy Cross, remember the last time you were here?” which debuted during this season’s home opener, following Canisius’s victory over Holy Cross in the preceding season’s championship game, and the “Loser Box” sign that Canisius students hang when a Niagara player is sent to the penalty box.
C-Block will be hosting a mini-event where clubs can create these posters at the Harborcenter starting at 6:30 p.m., but this over-excited editor would suggest that club leaders who would like to participate in this arrive earlier than that due to limited time and materials.
This year’s Club Night also falls on an “Athletes 4 Athletes” game that requires all student-athletes to attend the game. These games end up having the highest attendance — and, in turn, the best fan environment — with a great increase in participation.
Promotional nights like these continue to try and fight the battle that is the Canisius undergraduate population’s apathy for attending events. Despite hockey being one of Canisius’s most popular sports, it struggles to fill stands or even sections. Unfortunately, this is a common theme amongst Canisius sports. Since the pandemic, Canisius’s attendance has dramatically dropped and still hasn’t recovered, despite being out of pandemic protocols for roughly two years. C-Block, Athletics and many other parts of the Canisius campus are moving to change that and move towards stronger turnouts for events and athletics altogether.