Nothing beats the atmosphere of Paly Friday night football. The seniors in their camo, the performances from the cheer and dance teams and the packed stands really bring the night together. It is exactly how a sporting event should feel.
But only a tiny percentage of Paly athletes will ever get the privilege of playing in this atmosphere. The majority of Paly athletes will hardly ever see their friends coming out to their games, let alone almost all their peers in the way that the football team does.
Senior Beau Revenaugh, who plays football, acknowledges the special environment.
“I think it’s pretty special,” he said. “I really like it because the whole school comes out and supports us.”
Revenaugh values the tradition of football holding the Friday night athletics slot. So do many others: a rotating schedule for sports on Friday nights is, as far as my research tells me, next-to-never considered. The vast majority of discussion surrounding Friday night high school athletics are requesting that the NFL and college leagues don’t have games on Friday in order to protect high school football’s slot.
“Friday Night Lights as a whole is a pretty special American tradition,” Revenaugh said. “It’s something that’s always been done.”
This is true, and there is something to be said about the value and joys of tradition. However, there is no rule that the team under those Friday Night Lights needs to be football. We 100% should still support our football team, but as of now, pretty much every other Paly sports team is comparatively neglected, unfairly so.
There are so many other incredible sports at Paly, too. Our girls volleyball team is another fall sport, with an incredible team, impressive gameplay, and plenty of seating in the gym. Water polo features talented players, fast-paced play, and the whole pool deck to watch. Field Hockey plays under the lights on the lax field, and is such a fun event to watch.
There is the technicality that many sports don’t have facilities that support large audiences. The soccer and lacrosse field has only two sets of small bleachers, and the pool deck is the same. But still, many sports don’t get big audiences when they physically could; volleyball is a prime example, playing in the large gym. Another large hurdle would be the scheduling; to move around Paly’s game schedules, all of SCVAL would need to collaborate and agree on this momentous change. But just as it seemed impossible to have an equal number of male and female sports teams following Title IX, the biggest changes are the ones with the biggest impact.
Other sports are just as enjoyable to watch. In August, the world record for the highest attendance of a women’s sport event was broken as 92,003 fans crowded the stands to see the Nebraska volleyball team beat Omaha 3-0. Thousands of fans went out to support their volleyball players and enjoyed a sporting event, in the same way that football is always enjoyed.
There is also the question of equity; I leave the reader to consider if it is fair to female athletes at Paly that the Friday night slot is reserved for a predominantly male team, and that that is the team which gets the support and admiration from the school population.
The atmosphere that football experiences is never given to other sports, and sophomore Fallon Porter on the girls varsity water polo team believes that it would bring a lot to her team’s play.
“Knowing all the hype that goes into the football games, it would be so awesome if that happened in one of our games,” she said. “Because it doesn’t really happen.”
President of the Paly Student Athletic Leadership Team, junior Lydia Mitz supports this idea.
“A lot of athletes are putting a lot of time and a lot of energy into practicing every week,” she said. “It’s just really discouraging when people don’t show up at their games.”
Paly SALT is dedicated to helping other sports gain more attention and increasing the attendance of their games.
“We try to support all sports at Paly because some sports are going to attract more people — like people always want to go to baseball and football,” Mitz said. “But that doesn’t mean that, for example, the softball games aren’t important.”
By supporting all sports, SALT helps promote all Paly athletes.
“We try to promote those games so that the softball players can have a lot of fun playing in front of a crowd and the viewers can have a lot of fun watching those games,” she said.
All sports deserve support, not just football. Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenge of making this change, we must start considering — more than fifty years after Title IX — how we can start supporting not just our female athletes, but all our athletes more equally.
