Before I begin, let me just say that football is by far my favorite sport. I love watching it whether it be two high school teams or two professional teams. A lot of my peers probably feel the same way about it and love attending high school football games. The problem lies in the other sports in high school. Schools only seem to truly care about the one sport and neglect to give any attention to any other of the wonderful sports their students pour their heart and soul into.

Every year Robinson has a pep rally with the main intention being pump up the student body before the football game against our rival school, Plant. We have a whole pep rally dedicated to one game in the football season that we have not won since 2004, while our other sports see much more success and we do not hear anything about it. Sure, there are pep rallies for the different sports seasons, but there we just mention the teams and treat them as afterthoughts.

Attendance for our other sports compared to football is also much different. Football games fill the home section of the bleachers almost every week, while other sports struggle to fill the seats. I attended the Break the Silence game for our boy’s basketball team, and it felt like the amount of Robinson fans in attendance was roughly the same as the away team’s fans, in our own gym. This does not entirely fall on the student body, as there are few ways to know when and where games for any sport but football are taking place.

In Robinson’s case, our other sports normally see much more success than our football team. In the three years I have attended Robinson, our football team has not even been to the playoffs, while our flag football team has won two state championships. We have teams in other sports that are extremely good, like flag football, girls basketball and volleyball, but they are overlooked for whatever reason. These teams work hard to be the best they can for our school, and the school does not give them the same respect they give the football team.

I think if the school wants to celebrate the football team, then we should celebrate them. But if we are going to celebrate them, we have to do a better job celebrating our other teams that are putting in that same time and energy to play a different sport. Our student-athletes should not be disregarded just because they don’t play the most popular sport.