Credit: Kenny Chen
What are the greatest faculties in faculty athletics?
The ones that come to thoughts most likely embody Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana State, Georgia, Notre Dame, Duke, North Carolina, or UConn. What unites these faculties isn’t essentially athletic efficiency — it’s the culture created by their college students on recreation days.
In 2024, regardless of a middling season from LSU soccer — which completed seventh in the SEC — recreation days in Louisiana nonetheless introduced in a mean of 17,952 attendees. With over 32,000 full-time college students at the faculty, practically 55% of the pupil inhabitants attended these occasions. At Penn, nevertheless, the Quakers averaged practically 6,100 followers per recreation in 2024, which accounts for simply 11.5% of the full-time pupil inhabitants.
And herein lies the concern. The present sporting culture at Penn consists of indifference from the high down. It starts with the faculty’s advertising and marketing: Penn as an establishment is extra centered on teachers than athletics, which is evidenced by its lack of athletic scholarships. It continues with college students selecting to attend in lengthy strains to be let right into a frat get together over cheering on the Red and Blue at Franklin Field.
I got here into faculty as an enormous sports fan, and I’ve stayed an enormous sports fan. I’ve witnessed records broken, titles clinched, rivals defeated, and even a number of heartbreaks throughout my time as an avid supporter of the Red and Blue. While there are some college students who I constantly see at these occasions, the stands of Franklin Field and the Palestra are sometimes half empty, with an excellent portion of the spectators being athletes’ household and pals.
The drawback isn’t the expertise. We have a males’s soccer group that gained three straight Ivy League regular season titles, a men’s swimmer and women’s track and field athlete who competed at the 2024 Paris Olympics, a gymnastics group that has now gained four straight GEC conference titles, and a girls’s lacrosse group that superior to the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive yr.
Neither is it the services. Our groups play at Franklin Field — the oldest soccer stadium in the total nation, and the former house of the Philadelphia Eagles. There’s additionally the Palestra — nicknamed the Cathedral of College Basketball — which has hosted extra video games than another enviornment in the nation and is steeped in Big 5 historical past.
It’s us. A culture of faculty spirit isn’t one thing the athletics division can manufacture in a single day. It’s constructed by college students displaying up, recreation after recreation, till the expectation is that the stands are all the time packed — and never only for the Homecoming or Penn versus Princeton video games.
So, right here’s my problem for you: if you’ve by no means been to a recreation, go to at least one. Tickets are free for all college students, and all of the stadiums are inside strolling distance of the coronary heart of campus. If you’ve been to a couple, begin going extra usually. Bring your mates. Throw on some pink and blue. Make it a behavior.
Penn’s by no means going to have Alabama’s soccer finances or Duke’s five-star basketball recruits, however we are able to have a pupil part that makes each opponent dread coming right here.
VIVIAN YAO is an Engineering senior from Clarksville, Md. learning bioengineering. She previously served as the DP’s sports editor. All feedback must be directed to [email protected].
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