Members of Creighton’s Pep Band and the Creighton Dance Team are excited for the start of the new basketball season.
Arts & Sciences sophomores Laura Blenkush and Abby Draper participate in Pep Band and the Jays Dancers respectively. Both organizations attend and participate in every home game of the season. Both have been members since their freshman year.
“I joined dance team because I have been a dancer all my life, and I wanted to continue that through college,” Draper said. “I was really excited about being able to be a part of the Creighton athletics excitement.”
For Blenkush, her love of music and desire to make friends influenced her decision to join Pep Band last year and to keep playing in it this year.
“I joined Pep Band because I’ve always liked playing my instrument, and I thought that Pep Band would be a really great way to be involved and meet new people when I first arrived on campus,” Blenkush said.
Both Draper and Blenkush were involved in similar activities in high school. They said they believe the atmosphere of college sports games is much more exciting than that of high school sports games.
“It’s definitely a much larger scale than high school was,” Blenkush said. “In high school it was mostly the parents that went to the games, and now it’s the greater community and a ton of people around Omaha that go to the games. It makes for a really cool atmosphere.”
Draper agreed that both crowd size and dedication to Creighton athletics makes college sports more fun to be a part of.
“I went to an all-girls [high] school, and we had some good sports and we had some people who went to the events, but … fans weren’t as dedicated,” Draper said.
Draper believes last year’s Creighton basketball season especially was a peak year.
“I don’t know if any other season that I will be here for will add up to last season just because it was so exciting and there was so much going on with all the publicity with Doug [McDermott] and all of the seniors,” she said.
Blenkush agrees that once the country became more aware of Creighton’s presence, the students were more excited than ever to cheer on the Bluejays.
“I think, especially when [Doug] was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, once he got really big media coverage, everyone was really fired up,” Blenkush said. “Everyone kind of knew who we were and were watching our games and stuff, so that’s exciting.”
Blenkush believes it is too early to tell whether this year’s season will match the excitement of last year.
Some advantages that Draper and Blenkush believe Creighton students have when it comes to attending basketball games are the free tickets and transportation.
“I think it’s cool,” Draper said. “I think it’s a good thing that Creighton doesn’t charge students for tickets. I think it’s a unique thing, and it also is something that a lot of students take advantage of and go to a lot of games.”
Blenkush, who also works as a tour guide in the Office of Admissions, says she emphasizes the free tickets to the prospective students on her tours.
“When I talk to my friends who go to big state schools, they always say, ‘Oh, I got my season tickets,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, we can just pop in with a Creighton ID and get it for free,’” Blenkush said. “So I always make sure to tell people that on tours because I think it’s really cool, especially because we’re in the Big East, we’re D-I. That’s something really special about Creighton, that we get into athletic events for free.”
Draper’s favorite part of attending games is being an active part of the excitement as a Jays Dancer.
“Just being part of the excitement and the Creighton spirit and being up close to all of that and in the middle of it [keeps me participating],” Draper said. “I think Creighton fans are the best. I may be biased though.”
Abby Draper, left, and Laura Blenkush, right, attend Creighton games as part of the Creighton Dance Team and Pep Band, respectively.