Ronald Hughey: "We want people to come and take advantage of that and sit down close to us."

POSTED: October 24, 2019 -- 8:05 a.m. CT

The Houston Cougars women's basketball program has a new seating policy for fans who attend home games inside the Fertitta Center this season. The new policy is an open seating policy similar to the policy utilized by Southwest Airlines.

"We've opened up the arena like Southwest where you don't have to sit where your ticket says sit," said Ronald Hughey, Houston Cougars Women's Basketball Head Coach. "We've opened it up to General Admission. General Admission is everything -- even the lower bowl; so, you don't have to worry about trying to sit up high or anything like that. Like Southwest, you can come in and sit where you want to sit. But, the only thing that cost a little extra, of course, is the floor seats. And, then, box area. But, other than that, it's open to you."

Coach Hughey added, "Like every year, with our fan base growing, we had a chance to average, I think, right at 900 fans (per home game) last year. When you start talking about consistently, of course, some games (attendance) were bigger than others; but, on average, the number came up to about 900. We're trying to double that this year; and, you have to have goals to want to do those things. But, we're asking our season-ticket holders just to come; more people just to buy more tickets and come to the games."

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"We want people to come and take advantage of that and sit down close to us," Hughey continued. "You know, when we have those tv games, we'll have more people in the sections where people can be able to see them and see that we have people at our games and not spread out based on seats. So, that was one of the biggest things that we changed.

We have Candice (Candice Vaughn) and Alexis (Alexis Williams) over at Ticketing to thank for that; and, of course, (Senior Associate Athletics Director for Student-Athlete Development and Senior Women's Administrator) DeJuena Chizer and (Vice President for Athletics) Chris Pezman to have an opportunity to care enough about women's basketball to be able to do that because I know some people in other programs that are fighting for what we just got. I really appreciate that."

Houston's first home game of the 2019-'20 season is Saturday, November 9, against Southeastern Louisiana. Tip is scheduled for 1 p.m. CT.

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