Demystifying the Student Beanpot Ticket Process

The Beanpot final will start Monday evening around 7:30. While the attention of those in attendance will be on the players on the ice, an important part of the Garden atmosphere are the students that line the upper bowl in the corners.

Leading up to the Beanpot, Boston College students were sent emails regarding their ability to purchase student tickets for the tournament. The question immediately arose: how was the selection conducted?

Most students are familiar with the Gold Pass system, but for the uninitiated, an explanation is necessary. The Gold Pass App operates on students' smartphones. Using the phone's GPS, the app allocates points for games attended. For example, if a student attends a hockey game at Kelley Rink, they check in using the app and they are given the applicable points.

With that in mind, we take a look at the selection process. The selection is based on Gold Pass points. A certain number of points needed to be accumulated in order to purchase tickets. This year's threshold was 170 points.

What exactly does that number mean, though? There were 950 points available for checking in preceding the selection.

Among the revenue sports (football, men's basketball, men's hockey), there were 550 points available. This means, despite frustrations among students with Newton Campus' Residence Halls proximity to non-revenue sports, it was not necessary to travel to Newton campus to qualify for the Beanpot.

In addition, it wasn't even necessary to go to men's basketball games. While there were points to gain from going to basketball games (60 points against St. Francis of Brooklyn jumps out), not attending a single basketball game, along with not attending any non-revenue sports, would not put a student in a position where they would not be able to qualify for tickets. There were still 340 points to be gained by attending football and men's hockey games.

In fact, it wasn't even necessary to attend anything except for men's hockey. If a student attended every men's hockey game before the selection was made, they would have attained 200 points, thirty points above the threshold for the Beanpot.

If a student didn't attend any games except for football (and let me just say that anger about not getting men's hockey tickets might not be fair in this case), it wouldn't have been enough to qualify for Beanpot tickets. However, with 140 points, only one additional game would be necessary. For example, attending the final game for consideration, the home basketball game against Miami on Jan. 20, would be enough to get one over the edge. Attending two women's hockey games and one men's soccer game (i.e. two of the most successful teams of the semester) would also have done the trick.

In short, for those who got tickets to the Beanpot, it will be an enjoyable experience. For those who didn't, the game will be broadcast on NESN (Ch. 47.1 in the dorms).