Syracuse Athletics is attempting to break the SU attendance record for a women’s basketball game for the second-straight season, on Jan. 21 against Pittsburgh. This year, SU hopes its students will be the difference maker.

On Sunday, when Syracuse (14-4, 2-3 Atlantic Coast) hosts Pittsburgh (9-9, 1-4), student attendees will participate in Syracuse Athletics’ student rewards program for the first time. The point-based system will reward students that attend SU athletic events. Once students accumulate enough points, they will be able to claim a multitude of rewards.

“It’s going to be fun,” said Syracuse Associate Athletics Director for Business Development Anthony Di Fino. “We are catching up to what a lot of the other schools have done. We worked with Otto’s Army and we worked with a lot of people to make sure we got this rewards program in place.”

The system tracks students’ points through the official Syracuse Athletics app called “Syracuse Orange.” The point system will award 100 points to students for each event they attend. Certain games will be marked as “bonus” days, Di Fino said, meaning on those days students will get additional points for attending the event. On Sunday, SU Athletics will grant 1,000 reward points to each student that walks through the Carrier Dome doors.

The rewards points turn into “Syracuse Bucks” with 100 points equaling one buck. Students can track how many bucks they’ve earned on the app and then exchange them for prizes. The big-ticket items listed for the launch are an Apple Watch (750 Bucks) and two courtside tickets to the men’s basketball game against North Carolina (300) on Feb. 21. Other items students can earn include four courtside tickets to the women’s basketball game against Duke on Feb. 15 and a Dino Babers-signed helmet.

Students will also be able to participate in trivia, polls and other challenges to win more points and in turn, more Syracuse Bucks.

“We are going to keep adding,” Di Fino said. “It’s not, ‘We have 10 things and they are set for the year.’ We are going to keep adding to keep things fresh.”

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Doors will open an hour and a half ahead of the 2:00 p.m. tip-off and come with several benefits for early birds. The first 200 students will receive a five-dollar concessions voucher while the first 5,000 fans to arrive, student or not, will be handed a free t-shirt. All students who attend will be entered into a raffle to win a PlayStation 4 or a pair of tickets reserved in the first five rows for the student section for the men’s basketball game against North Carolina. Ten sets of tickets will be distributed in all.

Students with the premium or elite student ticket package that attend Sunday’s game will be entered to win an Apple Watch.

“It’s probably the biggest game of the year from an athletic side in terms of how much support we give something like this outside of that Clemson football game,” Di Fino said.

Published on January 17, 2018 at 10:36 pm

Contact Josh: jlschafe@syr.edu | @Schafer_44