The Regional offers sports such as alpine skiing, girls hockey, swimming and diving, cheerleading, and wrestling, but only few students know they exist and very little have ever been to games.
Senior Liliana Colonna has heard some of these sports through friends, siblings and posters.
“Even though I know about these sports I haven’t gone to any of the games because I don’t know when they are, and it’s really cold out and just hard to get to some of these games in the bad winter conditions,” said Colonna.
Colonna has heard from friends and family playing in these sports that there are barely any students in attendance for these games.
Colonna said, “I think there are many ways the school can get more students in attendance for these sports like making games a bigger thing on the announcements or putting in the weekly Pratt posts when sign up deadlines are and posting about opportunities to go to these games.”
Many of these sports don’t have a place to practice in the school and have to go out to others further away just to practice for the games they love that are even further away.
“I’ve never gone to any games for those sports because I don’t have any time but as students, especially juniors, we all don’t have time as we are trying to do school work, homework, schedule drive times, and such,” said junior Jaylee Murphy,
Murphy has heard of some of these offsite sports through friends and announcements but believes there are other ways to get the names of them out there.
“To make these sports more in the eye of students the school should announce it or email the students about when you can sign up for them, but also the students in these sports should spread the word because it’s the fastest way to get it to everyone,” said Murphy.
Freshman Cailin Zayca knows many people who are in these sports who say there are some students but not even comparable to a football game.
“The gymnastics team has been good and does get some attention,” said Zayca, but “if there’s only a handful of students going to gymnastics games when they are known throughout the school, I can’t believe many people go to the other sports games.”
King thinks it’s partially on the Athletic Director in setting up these games and how they should be more in the media for the students to see.
“Unfortunately, not many people go to these games from what I’ve heard, and they don’t compare to the football games in popularity from the students,” said study monitor Timothy King.
Many people, like sophomore Abby Lazaros, think that it is a social media problem.
“I’ve seen the cheerleading team perform and the team was great but I never saw a ton of students there,” said Lazaros, “If the teams for these sports made an Instagram or Tiktok page I think that would be a big step in the right direction.
Junior Gabe Modig doesn’t go to these offsite sports games but does have many ideas on how to get these sports to popularity.
“A way the Regional can make these sports more commonly known is through mentioning it on the announcements,” said Modig, “We could also have posters put up in the hall which would bring attention to the students as the same boring hallway they pass through got changed.”
