Lately, it’s been hard to ignore the lack of school spirit in our school. Walk into the gym during a game, and you'll see empty bleachers and a quiet student section. Go to a school dance, and the attendance is low. Even spirit days barely have participants. 

School spirit isn’t completely gone, and this decline isn’t something that can’t be fixed; however, students need more encouragement, acceptance, and willingness to step outside of their comfort zones. And honestly, it's not just about school spirit, but about students' overall excitement and connection to their school. 

To start, one sign of this decline is declining sports participation. At our school, most teams struggle to get enough students to sign up just to form more than one team. This season, both the baseball, softball, and lacrosse teams had to bring up 8th graders just to have enough players for JV and varsity. In past years, freshman teams were common, but now they’re rare. Even football - arguably one of the most exciting teams for a school to support- is struggling with numbers, and girls' hockey even had to combine with Norton and Dover-Sherborn just to form one varsity team.

At the same time, Massachusetts still ranks highly nationally for high school sports participation, with over 220,000 student-athletes, according to the MIAA. But high participation doesn’t automatically mean high energy. Student sections are often small, quiet, and lacking excitement. During the football season, there were multiple times when more than half of the student section left before halftime. It’s honestly sad to see, especially since high school is supposed to be filled with fun memories, school pride, and a strong sense of community.

Sports aren't the only area where participation is lacking. Spirit weeks are rarely celebrated anymore; honestly, they’re almost nonexistent among the students. Many students don’t even realize spirit week is happening because, aside from a few emails, it’s barely talked about - among staff and students. When it’s not encouraged, how can we expect students to participate? And even when students do know about it, many choose not to join in because they don’t want to feel judged, and we don’t blame them. It’s hard to enjoy something that’s meant to be fun when you feel like you’re the only one participating.

Similarly, our past two school dances have not had great turnouts either. Back in November, Homecoming had a pretty unfortunate turnout for two reasons. First, it was scheduled on a day when multiple sports teams had games, so students who wanted to go couldn’t. We understand it can be difficult to schedule these types of events, but school dances, especially homecoming, don’t happen often and should be prioritized. If people were invested, the date could have been adjusted to allow more students to attend. The second reason behind the unfortunate turnout is simply a lack of excitement. Students who could go didn’t feel motivated to. Instead, many would rather stay home scrolling on social media or playing video games.

School spirit should come naturally and be one of the most fun and memorable parts of high school, and it’s not too late for that to happen. There just needs to be more encouragement for students to get involved in activities that bring our school and student body together. If we can build that excitement and pride again, school could become a much more enjoyable and meaningful experience for everyone.