Rooting on the Eags!

Our campus is just coming off a full week of Homecoming Activities and we hope you and your student participated in some of the great events that were sponsored. The engagement we saw on campus was outstanding and we hope that we can continue to promote campus life and events that initiate connections for your student and their peers. For those of you who were here you saw how a lot of campus traditions – the Red and White colors, Swoop, the Red Field, the Fight Song, the Eagle logo- all revolve around our athletic competitions. 

We have a great array of varsity athletic events to offer to our students throughout the year. We have 325 students participating in 14 varsity sports – 8 women’s sports and 6 men’s sports. We also sponsor our Cheer Team and Swoop and give oversight to the new Wheelchair Basketball Team on campus.

The NCAA, which is the governing body for intercollegiate sports, offers a variety of divisions of play – Division I FBS (football bowls subdivision), Division I FCS (football championship subdivision), Division I (non-football), Division II, and Division III. Eastern Athletics is a member of the Big Sky Conference which participates at the Division I FCS level. The Big Sky Conference is considered the elite of FCS football conferences in the entire country and our Eagles have established themselves as a dominant player in that league for the past dozen years.   All our teams compete for the same championship berths that Washington, Washington State, and Gonzaga do – except in football.  The difference between FBS and FCS is that FCS teams do not participate in bowl games but rather have a national play-off championship. But in our pre-season football schedule we generally play against one FBS team – although this year we played two FBS games versus the University of Oregon and the University of Florida.  

The role of varsity athletics on our campus is four-fold: 

1. Offer fun and inexpensive entertainment for the campus and community.
2. Establish and build campus traditions and enhance the student experience at EWU. 
3. Help build equity in every graduate’s degree.  We help spread the word about the EWU brand due to coverage we get on television, radio, print media, and social media.
4. Connecting and building an inclusive community by pulling people from all walks to life to cheer on our diverse Eagle Teams.  Over 100,000 people attend our events each year.

We are so happy that your student is a part of Eagle Country, and we want them to have a vibrant campus life. Please encourage them to proudly display our colors and join in our campus traditions as they support their fellow students on the field and courts of competition. We want them to be “Eagles 4 Life” and coming back to athletic events is a great way to stay connected as alumni. Having “fans in the stands” is very important for our competing students and always gives them an additional lift to play their very best. 

We hope you will also utilize our events to spend time with your student on campus and reconnect with them! Please see below some basic bullet points to share with your student. 

GO EAGS!!

Lynn Hickey

Associate Vice President-Director of Athletics

lhickey@ewu.edu

509-359-2347

*The primary website to find information about the teams and schedules is: goeags.com

*Students are admitted free to all games by showing their university ID.

*Students have special seating reserved for them at football and basketball games.

*There is a student guest ticket plan that offers discounted tickets to families of current students.

*Every Big Sky game for our team sports – soccer, volleyball, football, and basketball – are webcasted on ESPN+.

*There will be shuttles available to transport students from different spots on campus to Reese Court for basketball games. Pickup sites will be on the goeags.com website.

*There are student clubs to join to be a part of the student fan base – like the Flight Club for men’s basketball games.

*Job Opportunities – the athletic department hires over 100 students each year to work games as team managers, student athletic trainers, marketing assistants, and in ticket sales. 

*There is a special area where students can tailgate at football games for free – behind the south end zone of the field.

*Men’s basketball will play Washington State University at the Arena in downtown Spokane on November 21st – this will be free for all of our students.

*Get involved with athletics through music.  Join the Marching Band or the basketball pep band which is called Code Red.

*If a student is interested in being student-athlete let them know that all our sports have tryouts sometime during the school year.  If they are interested in that information, they can contact my office at 509-359-2347 or email me at: lhickey@ewu.edu and I will get them the contact information for that sport.