After finishing off a hard-fought 2-0 victory over Harvard at 9 p.m. on a rainy Saturday night, Natalie Capuano and her women's soccer teammates still had one obligation left to fulfill.
As two local girls' soccer teams walked onto the field, the victorious Quakers were besieged with autograph requests.
Capuano was sweaty and tired, but she was more than happy to accommodate her new fans.
"It's great to have the kids come out and watch the game, and we hope that they enjoyed it," Capuano said. "It's just fun to be around them."
The youth teams scrimmaged at halftime and were given free autograph books as one of the team's promotions.
"Obviously, the teams [and] the coaches are huge proponents of programs like this to get a lot of people out to their games," Penn director of marketing Brian Head said. "And we've worked hand-in-hand with them on these programs."
Considering the nearly-full bleachers at Rhodes Field, it was apparently successful. Despite wet conditions and a late Saturday night start, the official attendance was 254, more than twice that of last Wednesday's match against University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
"It's nice to have support," Penn coach Darren Ambrose said, "and it's nice to have a lot of kids around."
Head said that this particular promotion has been done in past years and was not influenced by the Athletic Department's new partnership with Nelligan Sports Marketing.
Still, he said that similar initiatives will occur more frequently this year, and that every Penn sport will have at least one marketing day to reach out to students or the community.
"The best positive about it is you get a great atmosphere for the kids and fans that are at the game, and also a great atmosphere for the players to compete," Head said. "This year, there is a greater emphasis on improving the game atmosphere."
But the program's benefits are not limited to the field. Ambrose also touted its potential to increase the visibility of women's soccer.
"One of the criticisms I have of youth soccer - and even to a degree our own team at Penn - is that a lot of kids don't watch the game, so they don't pick up on a lot of the nuances," Ambrose said. "So hopefully we're influencing local kids, they're watching a high level of soccer, and they're learning and they'll get better."
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