Steve Weisfeldt writes:
>Although, as Mike mentioned, Lowell's attendance is nowhere near what it
>was during the Div II glory years, the last several seasons have seen a
>return to larger crowds.  Last Tuesday's tiny crowd of 710 was mostly due,
>IMO, to the crappy weather the Merrimack Valley was suffering through.
 
I haven't felt inspired to look this up :-), but I would bet a large
sum of money that the average attendance at a Lowell-Merrimack game
since 1989 has probably been around 1,000 or a little more.  The
weather may have been a factor, but remember that even snowstorms
weren't enough to keep people away in the past. :-)
 
Last year, here's what the attendance was:
 
11/15/94 at Merrimack: 1,228
1/3/95 at Lowell: 1,044
1/15/95 at Merrimack: 2,514
 
The third game came two days after Merrimack's upset win over BU, and
that game had followed a tie with UNH.  It is perhaps heartening to
know that only those two games had local fans suddenly interested in
this team again.  The crowd of 2,514 would be the 4th largest crowd of
the year.  The other three were against BU and Maine (2).
 
In fact, that third Lowell game had the potential to be a real turning
point.  If Merrimack had won or even played well, the place might have
been packed the rest of the way, especially since MC went on to a
7-2-1 record in the ten games after this one.  But Lowell blew the
doors off MC, 9-0, with many fans leaving quite early - who could
blame them.
 
On my post about the rivalry ending...
 
Another factor I had forgotten to mention was the makeup of the teams.
IMO, DivII and III teams often play with more emotion and intensity
than DivI teams do.  This was the case with Lowell and Merrimack, too.
The teams were much more "blue-collar" than now and tended to be
comprised of local kids who were hard workers but just not talented
enough to get DivI offers.
 
Those local players had usually grown up playing each other, too, and
were now taking their rivalries to a new level.  If you were from
Lowell (or Chelmsford, or Billerica), you tended to go to ULowell.  If
you were from East of I-93, you tended to go to Merrimack.  Sure,
there were exceptions...I seem to remember one kid from Lowell who
went to Merrimack (forget his name) and I thought I heard he lost some
of his friends and his family nearly disowned him. :-)  And, heck, the
Heinzes of North Andover first sent Peter to Lowell and then Andy to
Merrimack.  Of course, we think Andy was the best of the Heinze
brothers. :-)
 
You can see the difference today in the way the teams and fans seem to
approach the games.  The players used to glare at each other during
introductions like two fighters just before the bell.  That intensity
just isn't there anymore.  They might as well be playing Providence
(or some other team with which there is no history and tradition of a
rivalry).  Maybe a big reason is the number of players on the teams now
who aren't from the area.  But even in the past, it didn't take much
for those players to quickly learn the importance of the games, so who
knows.
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                 [log in to unmask]           [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93
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