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It was an even split among colleges with both men’s and women’s volleyball teams for the program that had the higher home attendance during the most recent season.
Nineteen of the nation’s 38 schools with both a NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball team and women’s volleyball team drew a bigger home attendance average for men’s volleyball, according to attendance numbers collected from athletics departments during the 2012-13 school year.
Men’s volleyball faring better than women’s volleyball in home attendance wasn’t confined to a single geographic region as both the majority of schools in EIVA and the MPSF had higher men’s volleyball attendance.
Seven of the 13 MPSF schools — including NCAA Tournament participants UC Irvine and BYU — had higher attendance averages for men’s volleyball. In addition, five of the eight teams from the EIVA had higher men’s volleyball attendance averages.
Women’s volleyball home attendance averages excelled in the Conference Carolinas with six of the nine teams having better attendance than their school’s men’s volleyball team.
The eight-team MIVA was the only conference with a 50 percent split of men’s and women’s volleyball programs having higher attendance.
This is the second consecutive year that 19 men’s volleyball team had a higher home attendance averages than their women’s volleyball counterparts. While men’s volleyball rivaled women’s volleyball for head-to-head home attendance average, women’s volleyball had a higher overall home attendance average among Division I-II colleges with both teams.
The attendance average differences at most schools between men’s and women’s volleyball teams was within 100 people. For the second consecutive year, though, there were four schools that had more than 1,000 attendance average gap between there two volleyball programs.
Hawai’i men’s volleyball had the nation’s second highest attendance average at 2,735, but that number was almost 3,500 people less than the Hawai’i women’s volleyball team’s home attendance average. In addition, Penn State women’s volleyball drew about 2,400 more people per home match than the Nittany Lions men’s volleyball team, while the Stanford women’s volleyball had about a 1,100 home attendance average increase compared to its men’s counterparts.
BYU was the only school where men’s volleyball program to out-drew women’s volleyball by more than 1,000 people per home match.
2012-2013 HOME ATTENDANCE AVERAGE COMPARISON
EIVA schools
Penn State — 3,112 (w); 714 (m)
George Mason — 237 (w); 280 (m)
Harvard — 224 (w); 239 (m)
Princeton — 219 (w); 212 (m)
St. Francis — 182 (w); 114 (m)
NJIT — 160 (w); 234 (m)
Sacred Heart — 99 (w); 118 (m)
Rutgers-Newark — 83 (w); 87 (m)
MIVA schools
Lewis — 180 (w); 801 (m)
Loyola — 268 (w); 401 (m)
Ball State — 542 (w); 767 (m)
Ohio State — 1,424 (w); 568 (m)
Grand Canyon — 257 (w); 190 (m)
IPFW — 594 (w); 435 (m)
Quincy — 197 (w); 170 (m)
Lindenwood — 209 (w); 217 (m)
MPSF schools
BYU — 1,620 (w); 3019 (m)
UC Irvine — 342 (w); 911 (m)
Long Beach State — 1,113 (w); 898 (m)
UCLA — 1,212 (w); 829 (m)
Pepperdine — 416 (w); 890 (m)
Stanford — 1,792 (w); 649 (m)
UC Santa Barbara — 279 (w); 396 (m)
Hawai’i — 6,389 (w); 2,735 (m)
Cal State Northridge — 434 (w); 662 (m)
Pacific — 777 (w); 214 (m)
USC — 2,021 (w); 578 (m)
UC San Diego — 317 (w); 445 (m)
Cal Baptist — 443 (w); 558 (m)
Conference Carolinas schools
Mount Olive: 219 (w); 275 (m)
Pfeiffer: 154 (w); 194 (m)
Lees-McRae: 254 (w); 231 (m)
Limestone: 162 (w); 139 (m)
Erskine: 74 (w); 92 (m)
Belmont Abbey: 327 (w); 145 (m)
King: 182 (w); 117 (m)
Coker: 169 (w); 97 (m)
Barton: 140 (w); 134 (m)