The Rebels faced the University of Kansas outside their usual home stadium on Friday, Sept. 13.
With the David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium under renovation for the 2024 season, the Rebels’ matchup against the University of Kansas Jayhawks occurred in the Children’s Mercy Park. When the Jayhawks aren’t playing there, the stadium is home to the Major League Soccer club Sporting Kansas City.
Before the ongoing renovations, the Memorial Stadium held a maximum capacity of 47,233 people. After renovations are complete and the stadium reopens in August of 2025, the stadium’s capacity is expected to decrease to approximately 40,000 seats, said the University of Kansas’ Athletic Director, Travis Goff.
To Jayhawks fans, football games at Memorial Stadium have a feeling that their home-away-from-home in Children’s Mercy Park just can’t match.
“I mean, it’s awesome. The crowd gets fired up, and there’s nothing like Memorial Stadium,” said Jayhawks fan Lori Fouler.
Game day at Memorial Stadium begins with the Hawk Walk. The Jayhawk football players take a walk down “The Hill” on the west side of Memorial Stadium, giving fans the opportunity to send good luck to their team as they walk to their locker room.
Another tradition on game day is chanting the famous words “Rock Chalk, Jayhawk.” Once referred to as “the greatest college cheer ever devised” by Theodore Roosevelt, it’s not difficult to understand how the chant can chill the visiting team.
The pride in being a Jayhawk and the support the fans give their team is something that can be an obstacle for visiting teams to overcome. According to Jayhawks fans, crowd noise is an essential factor that affects the outcome of sporting events.
“It 100% affects them. The better the crowd, the better the game we’re going to have,” Fouler said.
Harper Cordts, a young Jayhawks fan, said she believed her energy as a fan in the crowd helps her team.
“I think it probably gets them more happy and excited. Even if we’re losing or winning, it helps them know that we’re there to support them,” she said.
While the game day traditions stay mostly the same and the crowd gets just as involved, there is a clear difference between Memorial Stadium and Children’s Mercy Park.
There are only 18,500 seats in Children’s Mercy Park. Despite being significantly smaller than Memorial Stadium, Jayhawk fans said the crowd still brought the energy in their home opener against Lindenwood University on Aug. 29.
“It was a surprisingly big and energetic crowd for being a smaller, more intimate venue,” said Jayhawks fan Casey Cordts. He said that despite the smaller stadium, it was still just as exciting for fans.
“It was great, it was a unique experience for us. It was our first time, and we’d been season ticket holders for 15 years. It was different but a great experience to come somewhere new. This is different; it’s vibrant, unique, and fun to see the team in a different environment. You see different people than you do at Memorial Stadium. It’s fun to try something different,” said Dana Soetaert, another Jayhawks fan.
The different people at Children’s Mercy Park that Soetaert mentioned also got noticed by other Jayhawks fans.
David and Alyssa Kendrick attended the Jayhawk games last year at Memorial Stadium. They agreed that the environment was different, as the pregame excitement that is so prominent at Memorial Stadium wasn’t there for the first game at Children’s Mercy Park.
“It would’ve been nice to have more students,” David Kendrick said.
In the Friday night matchup between the Rebels and the Jayhawks, Children’s Mercy Park saw 21,493 total people in attendance. Crowd noise from a packed house was something that affected the Rebels’ performance all game, both for better and worse.
“We didn’t hear coach-to-player communication,” head coach Barry Odom said about a drive in the first half. “We really should’ve taken a timeout, but I had already wasted way too much time.”
The second half saw Kansas fans slowly go from being loud and prideful to upset to silent, as UNLV took the lead and kept it late in the fourth quarter.
The Kansas Jayhawks have many fans consistently attending their games, even at smaller venues like Children’s Mercy Park. There is an immense amount of pride that comes with being a Jayhawk. So what can UNLV do to increase the amount of Rebels fans and pride at home games?
“The biggest thing is showing up,” said UNLV fan Kory Boyd. “For UNLV, I think there are a lot of fans out there who haven’t been coming in the past. I think now is the time for them to show up and bring their support.”
The first home game of the season for the Rebels, against Utah Tech on Sept. 7, Allegiant Stadium saw 24,512 fans in attendance. This crowd stood as the biggest for a UNLV home opener since 2015 against UCLA.
“As UNLV continues to win, the fans will be here. For Kansas fans, one of the great things is that they’re loyal. So if we make that loyalty, it’ll help our players; it gives them the energy to perform well.”
