Take newfound school spirit to every game

Tufts students were no doubt surprised, and then elated, to hear that their football team won a game for the first time in years. After many seasons, the football team has won not just one game but all three home games, keeping an undefeated home record. What stands out the most at these games, alongside the massive success of the team, is the participation of the Tufts community. So far this season, Tufts has the highest total attendance to football games of any NESCAC school, averaging over 3,000 fans at all three home games.  While many students only celebrated school spirit on homecoming, this high turnout has created an encouraging atmosphere for our Jumbo athletes.

It’s a relatively accepted idea that Tufts is not sports-oriented. Yet, we only need look around the vicinity of the gym to see the many students running, training and putting in hours to excel at their respective sports. In the past, Tufts students have worked to build a solid community of school supporters through Fan the Fire, but today there’s something more. Excitement about the football team's first win since 2010 and the current undefeated streak at home have added to that budding sense of school spirit.

Emphasizing the athletic elements of Tufts can be very positive. Coming out for a shared cause helps to foster a sense of community, which can sometimes feel lacking outside of events centered on heavy drinking . Our community will be stronger when we start celebrating sports as efforts deserving of attention and respect. Sports can bring us together, just as activism, academics and art can and must do.

Our school spirit should be shared across the many sports that we play, both men's and women's. Our men’s soccer team currently sits atop the NESCAC as the No. 1 seed, while last year, our women’s basketball team finished its exciting campaign winning its first NESCAC championship and journeying to Wisconsin for the NCAA Div. III semifinals. Men's lacrosse and softball took home a pair of National Championships in the spring, marking men's lacrosse's second title in five years and softball's second title in a row. As Tufts students, we should get out and support all of our teams. Who knows, maybe it'll keep the winning streak going.