“The presence of spectators creates a desire in an individual to please the audience and create an optimal public image of themselves that reflects their ideals,” says Noah Perrin in his thesis, “Assessing the relationship between audience and sport performance in competition during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Often Rowland Hall sports venues are lined with rows of stands, and the players enter the field … to see them empty. Why? When players receive support from their audience, their performances are often better—as described by Noah Perrin. Having an audience for sports games is also integral to school spirit. The main thing Rowland Hall does currently to raise school spirit is a “Battle of the Classes,” which is a year-long competition between the grades to reach the most amount of points, with the main events being the lip syncs and the music videos in May. These are great, but they only happen at the end of the year and don’t encourage students to attend sports games. Shouldn’t there be more?

Many sources such as the National Federation of State High School Associations and Varsity.com say that having cheer teams raises school spirit. They can spread school pride by creating game-day traditions, holding pep rallies, engaging crowds at sporting events by yelling in unison with the students, and making students feel confident in attending the games by always being there; a student will never show up at a game and be the only one cheering. Not only would having a cheer team at Rowland Hall raise the attendance of sports games, it would drive the audience to be more engaged; the “characteristics of an audience can vary the significance of the audience’s effect on performance,” says Perrin, so having a more engaged audience could significantly increase a team’s performance.

Luna Saad and I (Catherine Seagrave) are working with Zac Alvidrez and Tascha Knowlton to create a cheer team at Rowland Hall to do just those things. Luna, a new sophomore to Rowland Hall from Michigan and a cheerleader, says, “It's about time Rowland Hall had a cheer team,” and she is absolutely right. Having a cheer team is incredibly important for high schools for many reasons, including that they raise performance levels of sports teams. Having a cheer team also provides an amazing community for those on the team. We plan to create a team that encourages students to attend games and be active participants in them. We believe it will raise the attendance of sports games and therefore raise the spirits of our players, leading to better sporting game results and thus more school pride.

Many students at Rowland Hall have even more ideas about how to raise school spirit. One student says, “It would be fun if we had themed sports games, like a neon day where everyone who comes to the game wears neon colors,” and another says that “we should have food at the games.” Both of these things happen already, but no one seems to know about them, or if they do it doesn’t encourage them enough to actually raise attendance. Having a cheer team could spread awareness of these themed or food-filled games by creating posters and holding pep rallies that connect the time in between school and games. In conclusion, there are many ways Rowland Hall could raise school spirit at sports games, and we hope that this year we are able to implement all of these ideas. And who knows, if a school's sports-team performance is raised with the presence of school spirit, people's spirits could be raised as well.