A student or parent attending the Homecoming football game would easily notice the large amount of people there. With students, the band, alumni, parents, and siblings; large amount of supporters at this game fill the stands. Is this amount of fan support equal for every team and game?
According to men’s soccer coach James Fendryk, not every team receives this equal support. “Not a lot of students come to games and if we get around a dozen, it’s a lot,” Fendryk said. Compared to other schools, the fan support at the soccer games is also underwhelming. According to Fendryk, schools like Loyola Blakefield, Gilman School, and Archbishop Spalding usually have a lot of fans.
According to senior Caroline Haggerty, field hockey does not get as much support either. “There are normally 20 to 30 people at a game,” Haggerty said. “It is usually parents and family members who come.” According to Haggerty, the field hockey team’s biggest game was against Friends School, who is highly ranked and had never been scored on. “There was a pretty big crowd for that and it was really fun,” Haggerty said.
Not every team besides football is left without fans. Senior point guard Mackenzie Reese believes women’s basketball gets sufficient fan support. “I think we usually have enough fans, especially at tougher games,” Reese said. “Our parents and close friends are very supportive at games.”
According to Reese, NDP is the game where the most fans come. “They have always been a very big rival of ours and still will be this year so we will try to get a huge fan section.”
Why do some teams get more support than others? Fendryk believes how the team performs can affect this. “Our success has not been too great and a lot of kids have stuff to do after school,” Fendryk said.
Haggerty believes bad performance is not the reason for field hockey’s low fan turnout. “I think we do not get a lot of fans since not many people are familiar with field hockey,” Haggerty said.
Fendryk believes it is possible to get more students out to watch. “Night games get more students out,” Fendryk said. Fendryk believes maybe giving incentives could get more students out. The field hockey team and basketball team put up flyers and posters to try and get more students out to games which is another way to advertise games to students who would not know about them.
One way fan turnout can affect a game is how fans affect the players. “I think the turnout of fans at a game can influence the atmosphere greatly. When more people come to support, naturally the energy is greater and the team usually feeds off it which helps,” Reese said.
“To be honest I think it affects us positively,” Haggerty said. “I think we play better with our peers there.”
Cole Alban is a Managing Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.