You walk into the game after flashing your student ticket. You’re all dressed up for the theme of the week, or if you’re a student superfan boy, you have a letter painted on your body. The whole point of the student section and superfans is to cheer on your school, socialize with your peers and dress up in crazy themes. At Hudson High School this year, many students said that the student section was the opposite of what they perceived a student section should be.
This year, the student section was different in many ways from the 2022 student section. During the 2022 football season, the student section and super-fans were the best hype people. The superfans would walk on the bleachers up to each grade level and make the crowd get louder, cheer and do all of the “year cheers” that the band or cheerleaders did with them. But this year, the super fans didn’t try and get the crowd hyped. When the cheerleaders and band people tried to start any cheers, no one reacted. All of these crowd cheers are supposed to be fun for everyone and show school spirit, but no one displayed that during the 2023 football season.
Many students of Hudson High School said that the student section was lame. It even made them not want to go to the games anymore. One student shared, “The whole time we would just stand there. No one would get excited or jump up and down like usual. The superfans acted embarrassed to get hyped. It’s annoying.” Another student adds, “Last year when I was a freshman in high school, the now freshman in college Ellie Forest would come up to us freshman and tell us we better get hyped, jump up and down and start yelling because she wanted to have a spirited student section. That is what a good super fan is like.”
The other issue that occurred this year was the rapid changing of the themes: it was a struggle. The super fans would change the themes three to even one day before the game, despite the themes having been set since the beginning of the school year and approved by athletic Director Michael Chuppa. Multiple people posted on their Snapchat stories to change the theme. One student added, “There was a point that I didn’t even bother showing up to the game because all I saw was back and forth about themes, and it just became too complicated and annoying.” We shouldn’t have these chain reactions affect the attendance of students at games.
Hearing “I don’t want to go to the game it’s so boring” and “I have better things to do with my life, etc.” is not what we want. The difference between the student sections now and then was the student sections used to mean fun, togetherness, school spirit and bonding, but now it’s quite the opposite. It now pulls people away from coming to the game. We can’t let this be a ripple effect for the future coming years.
