A big crowd turned out for Friday’s volleyball match.

In fact, the 2,004 in attendance was a record for Eastern attendance in Lantz Arena.

It was good time for that many people to be there. The previous record had been set Nov. 13, 2004, with 1,578 in attendance.

The audience watched Eastern defeat a top-ranked team in Tennessee State – formerly the third in the conference rankings.

And the Panthers got the support they wanted.

But to think: all this good came from some pretty poor planning.

The volleyball match was bumped up from its normal starting time of 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. so the 8 p.m. Homecoming Pep Rally could took be in Lantz Arena.

The match didn’t even end until 8 p.m. The pep rally started at roughly 8:40 p.m.

That’s pushing time tightly.

Volleyball should have the consideration of at least two and half hours for a match.

Friday’s match went to four games and could have potentially gone to a fifth game, if not for the Panthers putting away the Tigers.

But this all is swept to the background because of the good effects.

Who knows, maybe the planning of this all was supposed to be in juncture together – but wow, what a risk.

People were showing up at 7:20 p.m. to get good seats for the pep rally. Most of them probably didn’t know a volleyball match was even happening.

As it was, there were more than just people walking in: band members with their instruments turned a pretty quiet area turned into a loud, loud place.

It could have been a pretty serious distraction considering the extreme environment change from the first to third game of the match.

But it didn’t bother the Panthers as they continued their play.

It might have made the Tigers upset, but they had other reasons to be upset.

Many of their players were either yelling at the officials about calls or yelling at the Blue Crew.

As a special side note, the Blue Crew was in attendance from the start of game one.

Eastern head coach Lori Bennett said she was happy with the turnout and said she wanted to see many people show up for every home match.

It may be a stretch to say the volleyball team will get close to the number in attendance again this season, but it’s not a stretch to think it may have picked up more fans.

While sitting in the stands during game three of the match, I went from sitting with 12 empty seats around me to having every seat taken.

Initially, people were talking about anything and everything but the match.

Then, slowly, it started to get quieter, and I noticed people were focusing on the actual match.

And that may be the best result of this entire ordeal.

Panther fans were able to see a team dominate its opponent -a primarily young team with 10 underclassmen.

The team has been steadily improving as the season has progressed and Panther fans may have seen a glimpse of what the next few seasons may hold: big success.

Maybe there will be big crowds then, as well.