The blackout game is a big deal at LT, and anyone in the fieldhouse can tell by the hordes of students clad in black that we don’t mess around when it comes to cheering on our basketball team. As an athlete, I know what it is like to have a huge crowd in the stands cheering you on; it gets you hyped up knowing that so many people are supporting you and yet, the support helps keep you calm at the same time.

However, the love for athletes at LT seems to be pretty lopsided. Yes the basketball teams and football teams draw in a ton of fans, but other than those two sports the amount of people going to watch other sports decreases by a large margin. While I understand why it happens, I still don’t like it. It’s easy to watch basketball and football games where a majority of the spectators know the rules and how the game is played so they can follow it better. It’s much harder to watch a sport like Lacrosse if you don’t know the rules and have trouble following what is happening for the whole game.

At the same time, if you don’t know that much about a sport, you can still have a ton of fun watching it. If there is a big enough crowd there and the energy is high, it can be a blast to watch something even if you are ignorant to the intricacies of the game. In 2015, I watched the LT boys water polo team win state at Stevenson; at that point in my life I had never played or watched a game of water polo, but the energy of that crowd made watching the competition an incredible experience; so much so that I joined the LT water polo team my freshman year.

This fall, I loved the massive support that followed the LT Soccer team on their postseason run; soccer is a sport at LT that I feel like doesn’t get enough love, and seeing the huge crowds at Riverside-Brookfield that were supporting them really shows something about our school’s ability to rally behind a team.

I wish that we could see more of these kinds of things, where our incredible student section can come to more than just simply the most popular sports. Some of our teams at LT are really good and entertaining to watch: Lacrosse was a top 10 team all season last year and boys swimming and water polo got second and third, respectively. Yet it doesn’t feel like it just because the hype surrounding these sports isn’t as big as it should be, and some sports like football still attract massive crowds even if they have lackluster seasons.

This doesn’t fall just on the Weirdos or the school to hype up sporting events; it falls on all students at LT. If you and some friends want to hit up a gymnastics or swim meet then go for it. I’m sure that it will be fun if you get into it and your student athletes will appreciate it, as well.