As men’s basketball season tickets have become markedly more popular with students during the John Thompson III era, the Georgetown Athletic Department and Hoya Blue have implemented a number of changes to ticket-purchasing policies to keep up with the pace.

After many upperclassmen complained that they were disadvantaged by new ticket-sales policies last year, the university revamped its efforts this semester, offering tickets to the student body later in the year and opening sales to all students simultaneously.

In fall 2006, the initial offering of 2,000 student seats sold out early in the fall semester – more than doubling the total number of season tickets bought by students the previous year. The sales were mostly generated by a summer mailing sent to freshmen and by Hoya Blue’s tabling during the first few weeks of school.

This year, however, student season tickets did not go on sale until a few days ago, when the Athletic Department’s ticket office started an unadvertised sale in McDonough Arena. Hoya Blue will not start selling season tickets until tomorrow during SAC Fair, according to Hoya Blue Communications Director Dmitriy Zakharov (SFS ’08, MSFS ’09), who is the managing editor of the Georgetown Independent.

Kim Frank, the Athletic Department’s director of ticket operations, said that the policy changes were made largely in response to complains from students last year, when many upperclassmen felt disadvantaged because freshmen bought about 800 of the first 1,000 season tickets.

“Rather than send info out to freshmen and have upperclassmen upset with that, we wanted to make sure that everyone had ample opportunity to get tickets,” she said.

The Athletic Department has sent out flyers to freshmen advertising season tickets in past years, but last year was the first time that so many freshmen responded.

“In all those past years, it hasn’t been a problem,” Zakharov said.

This year, the Athletic Department did not send out flyers specifically to freshmen over the summer, but about a week ago flyers arrived at the homes of all undergraduates with information about purchasing student season tickets – although they arrived too late for many students who had already returned to campus.

“There’s been such a demand for information, it was more or less an attempt to get info into people’s hands,” said Mex Carey, Georgetown’s Sports Information director.

Some students have expressed frustration in online fan forums like the HoyaSaxa.com TalkBoards that the mailing did not include a return address. A corrected version of the form can be printed out on the Athletic Department’s Web site, https://guhoyas.cstv.com, and brought to the McDonough ticket windows or to Hoya Blue.

There is a limit of one season ticket package per student, at $100 each, a $10 increase from last year. The ticket windows at cDonough accept checks or cash, but Hoya Blue only takes checks.

Last year the Athletic Department offered students a second chance to buy season tickets in the upper 400-level section, but this year student season tickets will not be divided by section. All student season ticket holders will be able to access the lower level, depending on how early they arrive to games. Seating will be determined on a first come, first served basis by distributing wristbands to the first 2,000 students who arrive at Verizon Center. After the wristbands are gone, remaining students will have to sit in the 400-level section.

“We were waiting on final answers from the Verizon Center about what we could do and not do with student season tickets,” Frank said.

Zakharov said that the new system will cut down on friends reserving seats, a common practice in past seasons.

“People can’t expect to show up five minutes before a major game like Syracuse and expect their friend that came earlier to have a seat saved for them,” he said.

According to Frank, last year there were only two home games in which the overflow section was necessary. This year, however, she expects that more than 2,500 season ticket packages will be sold.

At this point there is no set deadline for the end of sales, and a Hoya Blue e-mail over the summer said that “all demand will be met.”

“Since this year there’s no limit on season tickets, essentially, it doesn’t matter when you buy season tickets,” Zakharov said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the first person or the one thousandth person.”