A Call to Action
Helmet – Nick DeGiacinto
Nick DeGiacinto
There are 16,000 high school teams across America playing football. Millions of people gather together every Friday night in the season to rally around and support the team. Yet some schools need to give their team more effort. Some schools need people to rally in support. Some schools have all the resources in the world, but no one makes an effort to use those resources. This is the case with Ravenscroft. I made a trip down to the campus to investigate. I first venture to the weight room. In the most successful programs in the world, the weight room is always full of athletes throughout the school day. As I enter the gym, the darkness hits me like a rock. It feels like it has just become nighttime. It is as lonely as the Sahara Desert. The very few lights are from the fluorescent spotlights that highlight the empty racks. There’s a fine layer of dust over everything. Cobwebs and cockroaches scattered everywhere. In the east corner of the gym, there is an empty chair. Sitting in the shadows, this chair is full of memories. Many coaches have sat in this chair, yelling at their athletes as they push themselves in this once-great weight room. It is so quiet you can hear your thoughts. All the disappointing thoughts of not working hard enough and none of the work ever paying off come flooding back in the silence. Your silence gets broken by a buzz. A lonely fly is flying around, representing what used to be this fantastic weight room, full of life and glory. The now empty weight room, with the knowledge of what it once was, is overwhelming and utterly consuming every day. This barren weight room is a reflection of the attitude of the team in every aspect.
After the weightroom I decide to go interview several players for the team to get their views on it. I first interviewed Hayden Shoemaker, a sophomore who was the starting center of the 2023 season. I first asked him about how he feels about the support around general athletics at the school. He said that he “[feels] like school athletics and the support around it is pretty good.” This is quite interesting as, after my personal experience, there were very few fans who were not family in the majority of games. In most games, there were 10-15 of the 400 upper school students in attendance. Next, I interviewed Hayden Stafford, a junior who played defensive end. I asked him how he felt about school spirit around athletics, and he said that “especialy for football, there is very low turnout… and there is not many students at any of the games.” I then asked him how he felt about some team’s efforts to prepare for their upcoming season. He said that it is “pretty up to the athlete to prepare themselves during the off season. There is no actual structure or any real plans up until right before the season starts.” I took him saying this and looked into the coaching staff’s plan for the offseason. At the end of the spring season, every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are team lifts and field workouts. The coaches are putting the opportunities out there, but the players are not answering. I am aware that other local teams that have a strong team culture will do student-led lifts. I inquired if Ravenscroft athletes did this, and he said that there is “not really [any culture]… in the weight room, there is not really any football players it is really mixed up and random and pretty empty. We are not doing anything at all together and not really bonding as a team.” This fits the research I did earlier when I visited the weight room during the school day.
My final interview to conclude my research was interviewing a coach, more specifically, an athletic trainer. I chose to interview a trainer as they are not biased. A coach for the team may be biased on the level of engagement from athletes. Coach Mike Rice has been an athletic trainer for Ravenscroft for the last three years. He has worked very closely with the football team and has developed relationships with both the athletes and coaches. I first asked him about school spirit around athletics, and he said that Ravenscroft has “pretty good school spirit with some sports and it is definitely lacking with others… [he] has seen less of a turnout of students at football games as the years have gone on. Basketball normally does pretty well and in the spring a majority of students are playing a sport.” I then inquired about his thoughts on teams’ effort to prepare for the season. He feels that “the coaches put together good things for the students to do in the off-season and it just comes down to the students actually doing it and it seems, atleast from my perspective, a handful of students will do what they need to do before the season but a majority do not.”
What is the point of all of these interviews? High school sports are so much more than just being on a team. It is a brotherhood. From my personal experience, the brothers I went onto the battlefield with will have my back for the rest of my life, and I will have theirs. I believe that every team should build this comradery. Some teams do not do all the things they can to build the brotherhood that results in success on and off the field. The early morning workouts and being there for your teammates are what make teams great. In my sophomore year, I was a part of a great team where everyone fought for everyone. We all worked together, and the whole school rallied around us as we rallied around each other. Football has taught me so many lessons. Football has taught me how to be happy with what you have while it is still here. Football has taught me to never take things for granted. Football taught me to never give up on what I want in life. Football taught me that there are going to be doubters, and you are the only one who can prove them wrong. Football has taught me that nothing is handed to you. Football has taught me that things can change at any moment. Football has made me into the person I am today. This essay is a call to action. It is a call for all players to work together to bring back the brotherhood so we may be great together.