Wichita State reports rare sellout

Season tickets to WSU basketball games gone for first time since early 1980s

? It’s not that Larry and Mary Kloefkorn can’t handle sitting next to each other at a Wichita State basketball game. They just didn’t have any other choice.

The Shocker fans on Monday bought the last two remaining season tickets for the upcoming men’s basketball season – nine rows apart in Section 106 – selling out Koch Arena’s 10,478 seats more than two months before Wichita State’s first game.

Larry Kloefkorn, 44, won’t have to sit in the last row, either.

After spending last year watching the Shockers roll to an NCAA round of 16 appearance on TV, Kloefkorn quickly put his name on the season-ticket waiting list. He finally got his turn Monday, after a few fans ahead of him decided against spending $439 on tickets – and the $2,000 required donation to the Shocker Athletic Scholarship Assn.

It hardly gave Kloefkorn pause, though, and he will be making his first run as a season-ticket holder from Row 2, Seat 5.

“The difference is Mark Turgeon,” Kloefkorn said of the Shockers’ coach, who signed a 10-year contract extension in April. “I know those don’t mean a whole lot, but I hope it means a little something.”

Athletic director Jim Schaus said a season sellout, likely the first since the era of Antoine Carr and Cliff Levingston in the early 1980s, had been a dream when Turgeon stepped foot on campus six years ago. Last season the school sold out 14 of 16 home games.

“It seems like we dreamed of this day,” Schaus said. “It’s another way of substantiating that our program has moved to another level. We’ve created an atmosphere at Koch Arena that’s renowned.”

And jam-packed. About 8,900 season tickets were sold, although athletic department officials say complimentary and staff tickets are still in limbo. That leaves 1,000 tickets for students and about 100 for athletic department use.

The only way about 250 people still on the waiting list will get in is if students don’t purchase their allotment or visiting schools return some of theirs. That’s why assistant athletic director Megan McKenna said fans who eagerly snapped up the last 40 tickets didn’t mind sitting behind poles or far from the court.

Or nine rows down from their wives.

“The people who came to the arena were excited to have those seats,” she said.