WOODBURY — Nonnewaug football games bustle with spectators. Students dress in the night’s theme and cheer from the stands while the seniors wave the spoon around in the air. The gym buzzes with voices during basketball games. Chants echo off the walls and feet stomp against the bleachers. Students are enthusiastic about their wins and angry over their losses.
But what about the other teams?
NHS currently sponsors eight fall sports and more than two dozen throughout the year, though some, such as golf, experience low numbers in fan attendance.
“It’s not really a sport where you see a lot of spectators,” says wellness instructor and NHS golf coach Ryan Campanario. “Every now and again a parent or two will show up and they’ll walk the course, but attendance is certainly low.”
Field hockey also experiences relatively low numbers of spectators.
“Usually just the parents of the students show up to games,” says sophomore field hockey player Sadie Turchuk. “There’s never anybody in the student section and it’s kind of sad. I would love it if more people could come to our games and fill up the student section.”
While parents are typically the ones filling seats, winter sports like swimming and diving have difficulty filling stands due to the off-campus location of the team’s pool and late night swim meets.
“Only a few, maybe 10, parents go,” says junior swimmer Connor Cabeleira, “and I don’t see many students from our school there ever. It’s just a lot of siblings and parents.”
Members of these teams are hopeful that their hard work and effort won’t go unnoticed by the general public at NHS.
“Swim is a pretty intense sport,” Cabeleira says. “We put a lot of effort and work into it so it would be nice for more students to come rather than just parents. It would be great to have that kind of support.”
As teams enter state tournament season, having a supportive home crowd behind NHS athletes is all the more critical.
“It would be nice if we got the same attendance as the boys or girls soccer team,” Turchuk says. “Not only do they have parents, but they have a really good number of students showing up and supporting. I think a lot of the boys like to support mainly the men’s sports, which contributes to our lack of attendance.”
There are, however, some setbacks and preventive factors that keep Nonnewaug students from attending the games of their peers.
“Matches start at 3:00,” Campanario says, “which is a lot earlier than a lot of other sports. Even by 45 minutes, that’s a big difference. In terms of students and parents being able to get there, that’s a big thing.”
Golf spectators have to walk the nine holes with the players when attending to follow along.
“You have to be a fairly able-bodied individual to go to a match,” Campanario continues. “We play at Crestbrook in Watertown and it’s not necessarily an easy walk. There’s a lot of hills. If you don’t really know or understand the game, you may look at the game as boring, especially if you’re not into it.”
“I think the reason why more people go to games like basketball and soccer rather than say a swim meet,” says Cabeleira, “is because they’re more talked about on the announcements and the school does more to advertise and hype them up. I don’t think they do that as much for swim.”
Nonnewaug assistant principal Declan Curtin told the Chief Advocate in a January 2024 interview that he and the school advertise all sports equally, but factors like people’s interests and the locations of some sports’ competitions can affect fan support.
“There is an issue in America where we value some things over others and people have choices, and people based on those choices support certain sports over the other,” said Curtin. “But from the athletic department’s perspective, we do not promote one more than the other. It’s the perception of things vs. reality.”
Campanario says that the convenience of students being able to attend a sport and the popularity of each sport are important factors for attendance.”
“I don’t think you’re going to get a normal high school-aged student to want to go to a golf match,” Campanario says. “I don’t think it happens much around here, but maybe elsewhere in the state. It’s definitely on the lower end of spectated sports.”
Still, athletes stay positive and hope for better turnout and classmate support in their future.
“It would be great if we could get hyped up more,” Cabeleira says. “We put in so much effort and practice behind the scenes and I really want people to be able to see that.”
