By Cory Spaugh
Sports Writer
The Western Carolina University Athletics Department has changed the way that students gain admission to athletic events.
In previous years, students have been able to show up at games on campus and get in by showing their Cat Card. Now, students must go online and print out admission tickets.
The name of the new ticketing program is the “Catamount Loyalty Program” and the system offers a few incentives for the students to use it. The sporting events that will require students to print a ticket are football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball and baseball.
There are several reasons that the new system was implemented, but convenience for students to acquire tickets for parents and friends who don’t attend Western was the main reason.
In years past, to acquire guest tickets a student would have to go to the athletics office and order their guest tickets, but now, instead of having to go through the athletics office, the only thing students need to do is sign into their own personalized account at www.ticketreturn.com/wcu and print their ticket and order their guest or guests’ tickets.
The new program also offers special promotions from Western’s local sponsors to students and
printing the tickets online also builds loyalty points which can be redeemed for prizes.
For high demand sporting events, the students with the highest point totals will also have first priority at those tickets. Such events would include the Battle for the Old Mountain Jug, the Appalachian State football game, which is expected to be the highest requested ticket event of the year.
In order to build points, tickets ordered by the students must be scanned at the student entrance of every stadium before the game begins. If a student ordered a ticket, but forgot to print it, that person would be able to go to the ticket office on game day, and if there are tickets still available, they will be able to get a ticket by showing their Cat Card. However, if the student has to get the tickets at the game box office, there will be no loyalty points rewarded to the student’s account for that event. Hopefully, everyone got their tickets for the first athletic event this year, the football game against Shorter on Thursday, Aug. 28, but if not, here is a step-by-step guide on printing admission tickets.
The first step is to go to www.ticketreturn.com/wcu, next, click on the sign-in tab at the top of the page and enter your 920 number, plus the two digit code under the picture on your Cat Card. The password for the site is guest on the first sign-in attempt. The following attempts are only the 920 number as the sign-in name and then your birth date as the password.
