TICKET

Continued from Page 07

Until his retirement 12 years ago, Starnes worked in the financial aid office for the majority of his time here at Ball State.

Ken Briner graduated from Ball State in 1969. After graduating, Ken served two years in the Army.

Ken and Peggy Briner have had season tickets to football since 1972 and believe they’ve had men’s basketball season tickets for about 36-37 years.

The Casazza family came to Ball State in 1966, Clarence was working at Miami University in Ohio. After finishing his master’s degree at Miami, he came to Ball State to work in financial aid. Carol worked in the Dean of Students Office where she worked with processing withdrawing students. She also worked to support students who needed financial help.

Women’s Basketball head coach Brady Sallee had nothing but praise for the season ticket holders who support the team year in and year out.

“It’s your fan base,” Sallee said. “It’s the ones you can count on week in and week out to be there in good times and bad. They are the ones that live and die every win with you; they live and die every loss with you. Clearly, if you can build that base, bigger and bigger year after year, you start putting bigger crowds in here, but they’re everything to your program.”

Sallee said he feels like the fan base for the Cardinals has been tried and true from the time he got there. He said those who have been there since the start might not know how much they truly mean to himself and the team.

After all these years, Starnes remembers his very first Ball State sporting event.

“I can remember the first basketball game I went to,” Starnes said. “We were playing Hanover, and their star player was a guy from my high school. I went to Ben Davis High School. He played for Hanover, and so I went to the game. I ended up rooting for Hanover because I thought that the officials were so one-sided to Ball State that it kind of upset me, so I was rooting for Hanover in that game. I think that’s the last time I ever rooted against Ball State.”

Starnes has been going to Scheumann Stadium since it first opened up in 1967, even getting the score correct from the inaugural game at the stadium.

“I certainly remember the first game that we played in the stadium; we played against Butler,” Starnes said. “We used to get beat all the time by Butler and then of course, we upgraded our program, and when we played Butler in that first game in the stadium, I think we beat them something like 65-7. So last time we played Butler, they didn’t want to play us anymore.”

Ken’s earliest game that came to mind was the Grantland Rice Bowl in 1967. Briner remembers driving down to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for that game.

The Briners have a schedule they stick to for home games.

“We sit on the floor, and we like to watch the warmups,” Peggy said. “We always talk to David Eha [a color analyst] and some of the other people that work there. We have different ushers and things. We don’t know their name[s] or anything, but we talked to them on our way in and have different people that we talk to, so it’s just an enjoyable time for us.”

Clarence is a personal fan of the local players coming to Ball State.

“Ray McCallum, being a local kid here in town and because he played Ball State and then went on to coach ... was always fun to watch,” Clarence said. “Bonzi Wells was an exciting player, he played here at Ball State. I always enjoy watching the local kids when they’re playing.”

The Briners were part of a program called Cardinal Cooks, allowing them to get to know players personally.

Cardinal Cooks was a program where members of the Cardinal Varsity Club would sign up and have football players go to their houses to have a home-cooked meal. The Briners would get about eight to 10 student-athletes coming to their house twice a year for a meal.

“Basketball, as well as football, started doing it, and then that’s when COVID[-19] came along, so it stopped, and so we hadn’t any recently, but we just got to know hundreds and hundreds of athletes,” Clarence said.

Starnes said he has only missed three or four games since 1967, and two of those were because he was attending his daughter’s weddings. His oldest daughter was remarried this past October, the day Ball State was able to come back against Northern Illinois University and win in double-overtime.

Starnes was listening to the game after the wedding when they were waiting for the reception. He also said there were other Ball State fans in the audience keeping him posted on what was going on.

Starnes was set to pray just before the reception, and of course, he started with how any season ticket holder would.

“I just want everyone to know Ball State just won in double-overtime in football,” Starnes said.

Clarence compared the Cardinal Varsity Club to a social event. After going to games for so long, he said he has gotten to know a lot of people, so watching a game and catching up with others is nice. Carol added that when sports are over, they look forward to the next season coming up.

The Briners go to every single game, home and away, for men’s basketball and football.