A mid-week baseball match-up between Arkansas State and the Memphis Tigers kicked off with a Student Activities Board (SAB) event titled Day at the Park. 

Over at Tomlinson Stadium Tuesday, students entered the gates met with a table full of custom jerseys and hats. While the supply dwindled after the first wave of fans, a crowd began to form around a set of four cornhole boards as a tournament of six male and eight female teams began. 

CJ Sterrett, the director of athletic engagement at SAB, said he wanted to incorporate a competitive incentive for students to participate in the event, giving out a $50 Amazon gift card to each member of the winning duo. 

“A way to get students involved is to have that little fun sports aspect and a little competition aspect,” Sterrett said. 

Jake Bellou and Kaleb Tedder came out on top, winning the tournament and taking home the grand prize.

While the grand prize was only for cornhole winners, the bystanders still walked away with goodies from the SAB’s giveaway. Due to its success in raising student engagement with the various A-State sports, Sterrett said this strategy has been a regular for the board, being used in previous SAB athletic events such as Order of the Pack and Howl on the Hardwood.

“We know this is college, so everything’s pretty much expensive, so we’re trying to give out as many things as possible,” Sterrett said.

The SAB athletic engagement director said they have continued to increase student engagement with A-State sports through their athletic events. He said the basketball head coaches Ryan Pannone and Destinee Rogers have mentioned the turnout at these events as contributing to the performance of their teams.

“They want students there to bring the energy because it really does change the atmosphere of the game,” Sterrett said. “They love all the enthusiasm that the students brought to the game.”

The SAB’s success in gathering the student body for sports games has not been the only shining aspect of their work shown through Day at the Park and other events. 

Tanner Yielding, a first-year finance major from North Little Rock and participant in this year’s cornhole competition, said his favorite part of the program was the SAB staff themselves.

“If you’re confused on an event at all, you should talk to them, which is nice and I always enjoyed that factor,” Yielding said. “They always have cool ideas to get you to come out.”

Despite expressing praise for the quality of SAB’s athletic events, some members of the student body are disappointed with the quantity.

This semester, SAB hosted three athletic events, which is about average.

Jace Garcia, a sophomore accounting and finance major from Searcy, Arkansas, who came out to support his friends participating in the tournament, said more events could help increase the student population at events.

“(There needs to be) just more stuff like this to get students involved,” Garcia said.

Sterrett said the SAB’s budget and scheduling are the contributing factors to this shortcoming in their planning.

“In the future, if things permit, we can go ahead and do another sporting event,” Sterrett said. “It would just need to be a planned earlier process than what we thought it would need to be.”

While Day at the Park will be the last athletic event for SAB this semester, the board will host a live musical game show event titled Aux Cord Wars in the student union’s Centennial Hall on April 16.

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