Carolina Seeks More Vibrant Kenan Stadium

Picturesque Kenan Stadium has seldom been a place one would call electric or intimidating.

This year, the Tar Heels are trying to fix that. It’s a new year with a new coach, new hopes – and new tubas.

Fans at Saturday night’s opener against James Madison will see changes that mark a renewed effort by the Tar Heels to hike their profile under Coach Butch Davis.

The seats reserved for students will stay the same, but Carolina is urging students to occupy the West end zone first and create a “Tar Pit” of rowdy fans.

“We’ve enhanced the sound system,” Carolina athletics director Dick Baddour said of the changes. “We’ve created a special area in the student section to focus energy, put the band there.”

UNC has 12,000 seats for students, ticket manager Clint Gwaltney said, and students are not assigned a specific seat. The first 5,000 students in the West end zone Saturday will get free T-shirts.

The Heels are moving the band from its long-time place on the South side to the West end zone as well.

“We want to make an intense, loud, vibrant student section, and really build on what’s happened in the Smith Center [when risers were put in for students],” said Rick Steinbacher, the UNC Associate Director of Athletics for Marketing. “That’s where the rowdiest students are. We’d love to reapply that to the football stadium.”

The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper, has written about the change, but Powell Latimer, an assistant sports editor at The DTH, said students are still learning about the alterations.

“I don’t think a lot of people are terribly aware,” said Latimer, a sophomore from Asheville. “I think that will become more apparent after the first game.”

Other changes involve the music at Kenan Stadium.

Carolina is adding new speakers in the West end zone. And Steinbacher said the athletics department helped the band acquire new instruments, including replacing older tubas.

One lingering concern for UNC is getting fans into the stadium. Carolina has long had trouble with empty seats at the start of games as fans linger to tailgate before coming in.

Steinbacher said the Carolina band will march around the stadium 40 minutes before a kickoff in what the school hopes will be a tradition that will invite students to come in.

Also, Carolina will have certain songs playing at specific times before the kickoff so that fans outside will know how long until kickoff.

“We hope this will be a tradition of a trigger, urge people to get in,” Steinbacher said.

Gwaltney said Carolina has sold 33,200 season tickets for this season, up from 30,200 last year. Kenan Stadium seats 60,000.