The concept of “school spirit” is a foundational pillar of the American education system, particularly in high school and college. The term brings to mind images of packed student sections decked out in school colors, cheering on their fellow classmates as they try to take home a win in a variety of sports. But is that image a reality at Fairfield? Unfortunately, I’d have to say no.
In some aspects, I think our underwhelming level of school spirit isn’t entirely surprising. As a smaller university, it’s probably not fair to expect our fan engagement to be on the same level as the raucous crowds you often see at the football or basketball games of big state schools.
Our athletics programs also play in a conference, the Metro Atlantic, that matches our size, so while we have some good rivalry matchups to look forward to every year like Sacred Heart and Quinnipiac, it’s not like we’re well positioned for College Gameday to roll into town and stir up a frenzy.
Regardless, these qualities don’t change the fact that there is still plenty of opportunity for our sports teams to perform well and bring some life to campus. The only problem is that, even when they do, most students tend to be … unreceptive.
I don’t think there’s any greater example of this right now than our women’s basketball team. In case you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, they’ve just completed a 31-1 season where they went undefeated in conference play and earned themselves a bid to play in March Madness later this week. They’re now nationally ranked in the AP poll for the third straight week after reaching the milestone for the first time ever on March 3, and oh by the way, head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis did a live interview on SportsCenter a couple of weeks ago. For a school like ours, it doesn’t get much bigger than that.
And yet, at just about every women’s basketball home game this year, there weren’t even enough students present to fill up half of our section in Mahoney Arena. It took Coach Carly giving out free meal swipes at the Tully, for one of their last home games of the year, in a rivalry game against Quinnipiac, for there to be a moderate student turnout, and even then there were still Bobcat invaders sitting smack dab in the middle of the student section that night with essentially zero resistance.
The issue doesn’t stop with women’s basketball though. Our women’s volleyball team also captured a conference title this fall, dominating throughout the regular season in a fashion somewhat similar to the basketball team. And while our students definitely showed up for the championship game, I could probably count on my fingers and toes the number of people in the arena for basically any other contest the whole season.
Now, there’s something to be said for having a weak turnout for games with a 7 p.m. start time on a Wednesday or Thursday night. I get it, we all can have a lot going on between our workload and our own extracurriculars, and some students may even have night classes that physically prevent them from making it to those games, even if they want to. But if you really try to tell me you’re so busy during the month of February that you can’t spare two hours on a Sunday afternoon to support your school’s historic basketball team, I’m calling your bluff.
So what can the university do to fix this problem? For starters, I think the promotions and advertising for games could be made a little more prominent. Some of the benefits for student attendance this semester have been great (who doesn’t want a free gift card to Chick-Fil-A?), but I think students are likely to miss that information if it’s only included in emails from The Red Sea that get buried under Blackboard notification spam and other inbox mainstays. Finding an additional means of getting those messages out to students could help in attracting a larger crowd.
Second, I think it’s time we start seriously working towards expanding our sports offerings, starting with hockey. I’m not even a hockey fan, but the fact that we don’t have a Division I team while being a New England school with a giant arena 10 minutes down the road in Bridgeport feels like a massive missed opportunity, and the pace and excitement of the sport makes for a great spectator experience, especially in a college environment.
Beyond that, of course, is football. I mentioned it a little bit earlier, but there’s a reason that football often seems to be the most unanimously supported sport by students at bigger schools, unless their team is completely awful or they’re steeped in basketball tradition. Between tailgating and actually watching the game, there’s nothing quite like a good college football Saturday, and I think the presence of that experience is something Fairfield sorely needs. The Mirror actually covered this very issue a few weeks back, but it shouldn’t be that far-fetched to reimplement the sport into our athletics department given the university’s obvious and ongoing attempts to expand in recent years.
Ultimately though, there’s only so much that can be done to combat the relative student apathy towards our sports programs beyond changing our attitudes ourselves. So this spring, when you catch wind of a lacrosse or baseball game happening on campus, maybe think twice about spending the day in your room and choose to show a little bit of your own school spirit instead.
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