Just a few weeks ago during “the dark days of February” we were all complaining about how bad the basketball team is. Well, the basketball team hasn’t gotten much better-if you need evidence, just put on CBS this weekend and let me know what time we’re playing.
Really, I’d love to tell you that this winter was da bomb fo’ shizzle, but it’s just not the case. In between the basketball team’s exploits at the MCI Center, there was a botched GUSA election, an impending war and enough snow to make the eskimos want to trade in their whale blubber parkas and igloos for cozy North Face jackets and the possibility of getting on-campus housing. But all is not lost. Wave goodbye to the dark days of winter and say hello to the high times of spring.
There is plenty to be excited about as spring sports roll in. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Georgetown’s men’s and women’s lacrosse teams are both ranked in the top 10 nationally. Both of these teams have legitimate shots at national championships. The women have reached the title game for the past two years, and the men, for their part, continued their ride up the polls with a thrilling overtime win against Duke last Saturday. Aside from their successes, these teams have one more thing in common-they need your support.
At both teams’ games against Duke this past weekend, the stands were filled with Hoya faithful out to catch some lax and some rays. Those in attendance are to be applauded, especially since they never seemed to be able to do it themselves. Showing up to support our teams is admirable, but we never seem to give the extra effort that marks the difference between simply walking into the house and raising the roof. Why aren’t our fans going nuts?
The women played all of Saturday’s game behind by an average of three or four goals. As the second half wore on, the Blue Devils ran their lead up to five, but a three-goal Hoya rally brought the women within two goals with plenty of time left in one of the biggest games of the season. The crowd’s reaction was akin to the one President Bush might receive in France: a smattering of polite applause while everyone turned to their neighbor to say, “What the hell are we doing here?”
During the men’s game on Sunday, people packed the stands, crowded the hills surrounding the field, and even spilled into the parking lot. In spite of all of this, the only time I heard an attempt at a cheer, it was quickly silenced when the fans who started it realized that no one in attendance was going to pick it up.
I’ve begun to think that perhaps our basketball team was not as bad as the entire campus believed they were. If you were one of the 15 members of the team and no one cared when you won, everyone dogged you when you lost and eventually people just stopped talking about you because they were embarrassed, wouldn’t you just say, “Screw it? We reap what we sow, and unfortunately we as a student body have sewn a field of apathy that reaps nothing but discontent.
We are fortunate to have two extremely successful programs in our lacrosse teams, and by not giving them the rabid support they deserve on game days we deprive ourselves of the things we continually complain that we lack. So, kill a 30 pack of Natty Ice, pound Zelko until you puke, do whatever it takes to work yourself into a frenzy, and then go cheer on our athletes. They deserve it and so do we.
