Spirit in the Stands

by Azamaya A.

Here at Mountain Range there are a wide

variety of sports that the school offers from volleyball to tennis. Student sections play an important role towards sports in ways they wouldn't expect. The amount of energy and encouragement can help a team drastically by keeping the players motivated to win.

Student sections play a crucial role in high school sports; they are valuable towards school spirit and showing support. Junior Camila C. is a current varsity volleyball player at Mountain Range she believes that although the support the student section gives is very encouraging she also believes that it could be overwhelming and stressful. She also thinks the support students give is very reassuring as a player to have people there who have faith in their abilities to perform as a player. She explains “ I would prefer the stands to be full! It adds excitement to the game and creates an almost type of adrenaline, which helps us play and makes the opponent lose.”

School sports are an amazing way for students to show their support. Although they are mostly positive there are some cheers and chants that are distracting to the players of both teams. The distractions they use to help their school are very creative, their celebrations, costumes, chants, and loud noise are great examples of how to be distracting to the students on the opposing team.

An anonymous Junior varsity basketball player explains how all the cheers make him feel overwhelmed,nervous every time he plays, and how all the costumes are distracting because of how creative they are they make him want to keep looking at them. He insists “ The cheers are cool sometimes and they are encouraging but they are really distracting, like the costumes. They are cool but it's hard to play when someone is dressed as an inflatable baby or something crazy.” He explains how he also feels it's hard to tell when people are being sarcastic in the student sections but he's already nervous and stressed out because of the game.

School spirit is a key part to sports because they help athletes tremendously with all their

encouragement and support but they also can stress out the players and make them feel very nervous. Mountain range has had a huge amount of support shown over the years at games and school events. And it has really shown how even a small student section can help change the shift and mindset of players to feel motivated. So if you are deciding whether or not to go to any school sports event you should, your encouragement has so much of an impact on the game more than one might think.