Sports at Athens Drive are the creme de la creme for many of the students. Going to the games and seeing other students play their favorite sports is one of the many fun activities to partake in while attending sporting events. Sports like football, lacrosse and basketball get the most popularity, but some other school sports feel as though they need some love as well.
When students of Athens attend sporting events like football games, the outcome is usually chaotic and fun. People are always cheering for the home team, eating concessions and having fun. But this kind of enthusiasm is not always shown for every sport at Athens. Sports like softball, tennis and even soccer do not have the screaming fans cheering them on.
A prime example is women’s lacrosse. When asked about the size of the crowd at her games, Molly Vaziri, sophomore on the women’s lacrosse team, said, “The size of the crowd is probably a couple of parents at most. I rarely see any students other than sports med guys or the varsity team.”
More people at the sporting events cheering for their team means the teams often do better and which can benefit the whole school. With many players looking to get recruited by colleges through playoffs and tournaments, winning more games means players have more chances of getting discovered.
“I think if more people came to our games and cheered for us it would help our team be more confident and do way better. Also if you come I’ll give you free donuts,” said Vaziri.
Vaziri isn’t the only person who thinks people should attend more sporting events. Natalie Graham, another sophomore player on the women’s lacrosse team, said, “Oh yeah for sure, we definitely need way more people to come because if people cheer for us, we’ll get hyped up and want to do better.”
But it does not just stop at women’s lacrosse. Other sports, like softball, are the same way.
“I feel like if there were a lot of students at our football games then we would really be motivated to win and I think that goes for every sport.” Carleigh Hiscock, a sophomore on the varsity softball team, said.
In addition, the Athens men’s varsity lacrosse team has a 11-5 record this year and many of the players owe those wins to the fans.
“The games we won were mostly home and everyone knows that home games always have a lot of fans. Even though we don’t get as much as the football team does, we still play for the fans,” said Worth Lineberry, junior and men’s varsity lacrosse player.
“When I do faceoffs, I always do better thinking about the people watching the games so they know how good I am,” said Peyton Smith, a junior on the varsity lacrosse team.
Even though the lacrosse team does not have hundreds of screaming fans like the football team does, they are still having a winning season with the number of fans that come now.
“If the number of people that go to football games come to our lacrosse games, we’d probably have one of those seasons where we don’t lose a single game,” said Lineberry.
Students are encouraged to come out and support some of the less popular sports like lacrosse, softball and soccer so the whole school is the winning team.
