With football season coming to an end and basketball season starting back up again, we wanted to ask a question: Do students’ sports enthusiasm in the audience reflect on how our athletes perform on the field? We asked several students and our own wide receiver, Dylan Hall, how they feel a strong atmosphere might influence the game more for the athletes.

According to students, encouragement matters more than we tend to think. “Encouragement always makes people want to play a little bit better to get a touchdown,” says Neive Clark. Many other students gave the same or similar response when asked this question, including wide receiver Dylan Hall, stating, “if the crowd is awake, then it’ll push us to do better”. Despite the response from students, data shows that outside of being present at the game, only 20.5% of students actually participate in Catamount Chaos. This may suggest that enthusiasm over the week may not be as widespread as the attendance numbers imply.

Nevertheless, attendance numbers imply that 61% of students proclaim that they do attend sporting events. This gives away that when the stands fill up, our athletes appear to be more encouraged and uplifted to play well.

It is always a good thing to be loud and present for our football and basketball players, but concentrating on just these major sports may leave out our excitement for other sporting events. This may leave teams feeling discouraged to play their best or just pertaining to a lack of confidence in their sport.

In conclusion, does enthusiasm help athletes? Based on student and athlete responses, the answer seems to be that a supportive, energized audience can positively influence performance. But the real challenge may be spreading that encouragement beyond just the most popular sports and maintaining the school spirit culture for all sports.