On game night of Week 8, the St. Thomas varsity football team was defeated in a close battle against Concordia Lutheran High School. After the heartbreaking loss, many football players and faithful St. Thomas football fans, reflected on what went wrong. Other than the defensive breakdowns and offensive turnovers, there was one key component that was absent from the Friday night game plan, the energy. The stands were quite empty on Friday night, with more noise being created by the visiting crowd.

The cheers created from the home crowd can be a key factor in a victory for any sports team. If you have ever attended a professional sports competition, you may have noticed the cheering after the home team makes a good play and the energy traveling around the venue. As athletes, we feel this energy and transmit it to our performance.

After talking with many students of St. Thomas and questioning them on why they choose not to attend the varsity football games, I have summarized the main reasons. One senior explained to me that the team is not performing and it is not entertaining to watch the games anymore.

Since the football team hasn’t been performing, especially against big rivals like Episcopal and St. Pius X, students don’t think it’s worth it to attend the games. As a fan, the atmosphere is not exciting when the team is losing by a substantial margin.

Further discussion with students brought up another aspect of the football games that affect the attendance, and that is the events leading up to the big games. School spirit has been on the decline these past couple of months. Students aren’t excited about school activities, especially the Friday night football games. Many students are simply not interested.

The previously engaging and entertaining pep rallies have turned boring and chaotic. The Eagle Guard are lacking motivation to create fun pep rallies. Their enthusiasm is not present during the actual game, and the crowd loses focus. When they fail to hype-up the game throughout the week and attempt to make up for it on Friday, students have already made plans for the night.

Although many students are very disappointed with the football game attendance, they do, however, have some great ideas that could make going to the Friday night games a priority in the student body’s weekly agenda. Junior Gabriel Lenz thinks that we should have more advertisements for the games to notify the students.

“There need to be signs in the hallways talking up the game and more reminders on EBN to give people time to adjust their personal schedule.”

The Eagle Guard needs to take on more responsibility. Whether it’s scheduling meetings to plan pep rallies or simply hyping-up the games throughout the week, the STH students are disappointed and expect better performances in the future. Senior Sebastian Housh thinks that the Eagle Guard should have more attention-grabbing performances so that it is not routine.

“Even if it is just shooting t-shirts into the crowd, they need to plan activities that makes people want to come to a game. If there were more special events during the games, I think people would want to go more.”

Recently, the football team hasn’t been performing as well as expected, but a change in home crowd attendance could just be the boost they need to begin a home game winning streak, looking forward to the future seasons.