As part of the Year of the Fan, Drake head coaches and student-athletes will be delivering season tickets to select season ticket holders as a way of personally thanking some of the Bulldogs' biggest supporters for their continued support of Drake athletics and its student-athletes.
Members of the Drake women's volleyball team visited Connie and Fred Crawford to deliver her season tickets.
Connie and Fred trace their following of the volleyball team to 1994 and have also enjoyed attending women's basketball and softball games. The Crawfords describe the current volleyball program to be like family and are impressed with the team's camaraderie this year. Fred once used a volleyball game as an excuse to surprise his wife Connie. They plan on following the team to the MVC Tournament in Cedar Falls, Iowa, this year.
Members of the Drake women's basketball team and head coach Jennie Baranczyk visited Linda Holz to deliver her season tickets.
Holz began attending Drake basketball games in 1994 with her husband, Dan, when the two began dating. Dan was a long-time season-ticket holder of the men's team and Holz encourage him to also go to the women's games. The couple first purchased a package of four home game tickets, but enjoyed the games so much they soon became season ticket holders and avid supporters ever since.
Holz, who played guard for Valley in high school, says the women are fun to watch because they always show such enthusiasm for the game. Sadly, her husband passed away in 2012 but Holz continues to follow both the men and women basketball teams.
Drake men's soccer coaches Gareth Smith and Kyle Smith along with student-athletes Darrin MacLeod and James Grunert visited Josie Poppen to deliver her Drake men's soccer season tickets.
Poppen is in her 29th year as a costume designer and instructor in the theatre arts department at Drake. She has taught costuming and stage makeup to every theatre major that has been at Drake during her tenure.
She enjoys being a fan of Drake athletics and men's soccer because she gets to know the athletes as students first, and then see them compete on the pitch. Josie says she is a fan of soccer because of its simplicity, but at the same time, the game's challenges allow her to watch the student-athletes problem solve on the field.
Drake head women's soccer coach Lindsey Horner and student-athletes Annie Schmitz and Shelley Lyjak visited Garland and Marlys Seibert of Ankeny, Iowa, to deliver their women's soccer season tickets. The Garland's are longtime season ticket holders to every ticketed sport at Drake and extremely loyal Bulldog supporters. Garland is a two-time Drake graduate having received both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Drake. He was also a student-athlete at Drake and member of the Bulldogs' 1958 Sun Bowl team. Garland used his degree in education to enjoy a lengthy and rewarding career as a teacher in Des Moines and the surrounding communities.
