The start of the 2024-25 athletic season is less than a month away for Western Kentucky.

WKU’s women’s soccer program will officially open the year first with a road game at Austin Peay on Aug. 15, followed by the school’s first regular-season home game against Union (Tenn.) on Aug. 22.

It’s the start of a big month for WKU, with the football team opening its season Aug. 31 with a nationally-televised matchup against perennial power Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Western’s cross country teams starting a day earlier at the Belmont Opener in Nashville and the Hilltoppers’ volleyball team closing out a three-match weekend in the Kentucky tournament against the host Wildcats on Aug. 31 in Lexington.

By the start of September, the sports season will really be rolling for WKU, with the men’s and women’s golf teams also opening play in the fall season.

The promise of more wins and accomplishments awaits, but collectively WKU’s sports teams have quite a lot to live up to this coming season after Western Kentucky sports enjoyed perhaps its most successful stretch in a decade during the 2023-24 school year.

“I think if you look at everything across the board, arguably it was the most successful year that we’ve had in the last 10 years from the standpoint that you had a year where football won a bowl game for the seventh time in 10 years, volleyball goes to an NCAA tournament and wins a match – finishes in the top 25,” Western Kentucky athletic director Todd Stewart said. “Men’s basketball finally gets back to the NCAA Tournament. So those three programs from a team standpoint reached the postseason. And then softball came very close – second in the regular season and second in the tournament.

“But then I think the icing on the cake was really some of the individual performances that we had. From Katie Isenbarger being an All-American and going to the U.S. Olympic Trials, to a golf first – Catie Craig and Luke Fuller both making the NCAA regionals … in the history of men’s and women’s golf here, we’ve never had a year where both have done that. I think all that added up, that across the board success, it kind of started in September and went all the way to May. It was very special.”

Among the highlights:

•WKU football coach Tyson Helton improved his bowl record to 4-1 in five seasons leading the program as the Hilltoppers rallied from four touchdowns behind to stun Old Dominion 38-35 in overtime in front of a national broadcast audience on ESPN.

•Longtime Hilltopper volleyball coach Travis Hudson continued his remarkable stretch of sustained success leading the program, as the Hilltoppers won the Conference USA regular season and postseason tournaments to reach the NCAA Tournament for the 12th time in 14 years – WKU won its opening-round match before falling to regional host Tennessee in the second round.

•Under first-year coach Steve Lutz, WKU’s men’s basketball team ended an 11-year drought by reaching the NCAA Tournament after winning three straight games to capture the automatic bid as the Conference USA tournament champion.

•Individual success stories included Craig and Fuller, who made WKU history by both qualifying for the NCAA regionals – the first time a representative from both the men’s and women’s teams have accomplished that in the same year. Isenbarger ended her decorated career as an Honorable Mention All-American and reaching the U.S. Track & Field Olympic Trials in the women’s high jump.

WKU also enjoyed highly successful seasons in the spring in baseball, softball and women’s tennis.

it all adds up to plenty of excitement for the coming season – Stewart hopes that sentiment will continue to extend into the community in the form of increased attendance across the board.

“We’ve got great fans who are with us thick and thin, but I think we need to have a great fan base,” Stewart said. “And to me a great fan base is one that shows up to see you play because you’re playing. And they show up to see you play regardless of who you play or when you play. And I don’t know that we’re there yet. I think a lot of people show up based on when we play and who we play, not as much to see us play. I think if we’re going to grow our attendance from where it is to where we’d like to be, that’s what has to happen.”

Stewart said WKU’s core fan base has remained strong, willing even to travel with the team for road games like the CUSA basketball tournaments in Huntsville, Alabama, plus other marquee matchups in basketball and football in particular. But home attendance still isn’t to the consistent level WKU desires, despite putting a winning product on the field and courts.

“The turnout in Huntsville was great when we were down there for the tournament – it got better every day and there was a championship vibe I felt in that arena that built each day,” Stewart said. “It was really special on that Saturday night when we won the championship.

“All that being said, given the success that we’ve had, I guess I would think it would be a little bit better than what it is. Especially on the football side – we all lived some tough times back in 2008-10 … I think we went 2-10, 0-12, 2-10. Obviously there were some real growing pains there in the transition. But if you had told me back then that coming out of that we’d have a 10-year stretch where we win seven bowl games, I would’ve said we’ll be packing this place, especially with the NFL draft choices that we’ve had, and the exciting offensive style that we play. But for whatever the reason, that’s still not there. Our attendance in football a lot of times is more date and time based than it is anything else. If we play a Saturday night game in September, we will have a great crowd. It doesn’t matter who we play, assuming the weather’s decent, we’ll have a great crowd.”

Case in point – WKU’s top attendance home attendance mark of 20,713 at Houchens-Smith Stadium came on Sept. 9 against FCS opponent Houston Christian. Contrast that with the Tops’ big home matchup against new CUSA rival and nationally-ranked Liberty – only 16,036 fans showed up for the Tuesday night game in October. By the final home game of the season on Nov. 18 against Sam Houston State, attendance was down to a season-low 11,041 fans.

“It’s been a hard one to kind of figure out sometimes,” Stewart said. “Sometimes I think the respect of our program in some degrees is greater outside of Warren County than it is inside Warren County. I think the success the program’s had with the draft choices, the Bailey Zappe record-setting performances, it’s made it a national program and there’s a national identity there that you think would correlate … it’s not a huge stadium, you would think that getting 20,000 people for a game would happen more often than it does.

“ … September is almost a sure thing, and then in October it kind of declines a little bit, and then unfortunately in November it doesn’t seem to matter what our record is or who we play – attendance is just not what you’d think it would be, especially in years that you’re successful and going to bowl games. But a lot of that is on us. We’ve just got to keep putting a great product out there and keep promoting, just keep doing what we can do to grow that fan base because they do make a difference when there’s a really good crowd.”

Attendance could also use a boost in WKU’s other tentpole sport, men’s basketball. A weak home nonconference schedule plus the uncertainty of a largely rebuilt team under Lutz – who departed after one season to become the head coach at Oklahoma State, with top assistant Hank Plona taking over as the team’s new head coach – may have factored into last season’s attendance numbers.

As the team enjoyed success in what ultimately would be a 22-12 campaign marked by that CUSA tournament championship at NCAA Tournament appearance, the fan base began to come around. For the CUSA home opener against Liberty on Jan. 6, WKU had a solid crowd of 5,057 at E.A. Diddle Arena. The Tops didn’t break 5,000 again until the rivalry game against MTSU (5,527 on Feb. 3), then promptly had more than 2,000 less fans in attendance for the team’s next home game against UTEP (3,305) despite winning three games straight heading into that contest.

The last two home games against New Mexico State (5,102 fans) and Louisiana Tech (season-high 5,658 fans) were encouraging signs, and that following continued with an impressive contingent of Hilltopper fans at Huntsville’s Propst Arena for the CUSA Tournament and then in Indianapolis for the Tops’ NCAA Tournament matchup against Marquette.

“In Diddle Arena, obviously the capacity there is just a little over 7,500,” Stewart said. “My hope is that this year, given how many people are returning to the program following a really successful year that we pick up where we left off because last year was a little slow. The attendance wasn’t really great early on, which I understand – there was a lot of newness to the program, it was not a particularly exciting home schedule and I get that. But this year there’s not a lot of newness to the program. There’s a lot of continuity, a team that our fans really did eventually wrap their arms around and the support down the stretch was really good. The support in Huntsville was really good, the support in Indianapolis for the NCAA tournament game was really good. And so hopefully we can pick up where we left off because the home schedule this year will be much better.

“We’re going to open the season against Wichita State – that will be the home opener. So right out of the gate, that’s a big game. Hopefully the energy that we had toward the end of the year, particularly the Louisiana Tech game, the final home game, is what we start with.”