They have given out free pizzas, T-shirts and hosted pre-game barbecues.

They have tried to entice the student body with prizes, tried to promote enthusiasm and have tried to get students in the stands at Sacramento State athletic events.

With the end of the semester approaching, Green Thunder, a spirit organization, has 125 members out of a campus of 28,375.

“At other schools, you’ll see 500 students all wear the same T-shirts and stand for entire basketball games and cheer,” said Mark Livingston, associate athletic director.”If we could get 300 or 400 students to come and all wear the same T-shirts, that would be amazing to have those kind of numbers.”

Livingston, along with Pat Worley, Associatied Students, Inc. executive director, oversee the actions of Green Thunder and it’s student director, Laura Cadranel.

“I think there is still a lot of work that we need to do with Green Thunder to get it where it needs to be,” Livingston said. “The concept is a great idea. It is just implementing and trying to get the student body more active in participation.”

Green Thunder, which operates on a yearly budget of $38,000, is funded from student fees. Each student is required to pay $54.50 to the athletic department and two percent of that total is kicked back to the eight-year-old organization.

Green Thunder’s mission is to get students involved with the campus and athletic events, Cadranel said.

“If Sac State is a body, Green Thunder is kind of like an arm,” Cadranel said. “It is not where I would like it to be, but it is kind of paving the way of what this campus can be – getting students to go out to athletic events, any events on campus, just getting involved.”

Sacramento’s volleyball team, who defended its Big Sky Championship successfully this season, saw a drop off from an average attendance of 373 last season to 353 in 2003.

Livingston said he feels this drop off is due to the fact that three volleyball games were scheduled in the afternoon because of being scheduled the same day as football games.

The volleyball team traveled to Stanford on Thursday to play in the first round of the NCAA tournament and although ASI President Peter Ucovich attended the game by escort of the marching band bus, transportation for other students was not provided by Green Thunder.

“We get an allotted amount of budget that we have travel money and food money so we can take students to away games,” Cadranel said.

For the men’s basketball game, which took place at then -17th ranked Stanford, Green Thunder failed to provide transportation or ask students about heading to Maples Pavilion in Palo Alto.

Livingston, Cadranel and Ucovich all said that the struggle with athletic event attendance coincides with the struggle to promote.

Cadranel said that flyers are passed out to students a week before games, including 300 a week that went out during football season. Cadranel also said that most students do not realize that games are free to them.

The new solution being floated around the athletic department is to move Green Thunder’s offices from the Union to the Athletics Department in Yosemite Hall.

“I would love to have Green Thunder’s offices in athletics, so we could work with them everyday,” Livingston said. “It is just difficult when their offices are not close to ours.”

What also has proven difficult for Cadranel and Livingston, who was hired this July after working at Gonzaga University, is the Student Activities Center and University Union’s flyer and promotional posting policies.

SAC allows the athletic department to post signage on kiosks, the five-sided bulletin boards, throughout the campus. Cadranel said Green Thunder chooses not to post too much in fear of violating policies.

Livingston said he is frustrated that in the Union athletics has access to one display case on the first floor. He sees large banners and displays like the one that was up last week for Ozomatli, but athletics would not be permitted to have a sign that large in the Union, because such banners are reserved for Union-sponsored events only.

Green Thunder is currently pushing to get the 1,100 students that live in the dorms to come out to the games, because the dorm students are the easiest group to promote to and the ones that would most likely show up for athletic events.

Ucovich said he would also like to see Green Thunder reach out to more clubs, sororities and fraternities.

With the men’s basketball season beginning, Cadranel said she hopes that by the time Big Sky Conference games starts she will be able to purchase a television and a XBOX, a Microsoft game system, that students could play prior to game time.

Currently, with just two home games played, the men’s basketball team is averaging 907 fans per game, which is more than this time last year.

“I think it starts with a few students,” Livingston said.

At the Dec. 2 men’s basketball against San Jose Christian in the front row stood seven Green Thunder members with green T-shirts and a sign that said “Sportscenter is next.”

The test will come in March at the end the basketball season when it will be seen if the group of seven has expanded or evaporated.