When you walk into a basketball game, what do you expect to see?

Do you want to see the crowd filled with excitement and noise wall to wall with a sea of black and blue, all yelling in unison? Or is it an image of less than one hundred people sitting down barely paying attention to what is in front of them?

The first lively image is what people expect and hope for, but this image doesn’t seem to come as true as some people would like it to and no one really knows why that is. Maybe it’s the fact that students don’t want to show pep in fear of being seen as lame by others or the idea that there are better things to be doing than cheering on the people that will bring awareness to their school.

“It is a family,” senior Brenden Hunt explains. “It’s that idea that some people are going to be connected to others in different ways. I’m connected to the East High family more than other people are, so I show it in different ways than other people will.”

Even though the connection with other students does play a large part in the feeling of the school, the reasons for why students attend these events vary.

“I’m not good at basketball,” said senior Finley Hastings. “So I try to contribute to the team from the sidelines. It’s my fourth year here, so I just like having a good time with my friends in the student section.”

“It’s just really fun,” senior Ryan Monaco said. “Being with friends, loving the school.”

The challenging part of having successful support for everyone is getting a large variety of people involved.

“I think connecting to everyone regardless of whether it’s your sport or if it’s a club,” said Hunt. “Just have everyone be included more so by acknowledging other people sports and clubs and success in other things more.”

Spreading out the spirit throughout the students could help get people excited too.

“It would be more helpful to have people who cheer spread out through the student section,” suggested Hastings. “Because right now it’s the people that want to cheer at the front. If we spread that out maybe we could get more cheers going.”

Hastings also believes that the root of the issue seems to be in the students themselves, feeling isolated and ignored, even though it seems to be that the themes help to get more people involved.

The hope for the rest of this year and for the future classes of East High is that all the students will be equally excited and feel the need to support their peers, while dressed up as tacky tourists or not.

The students seem to need to step up their game and get each other involved, instead of relying on the rest of the student body. What would make a difference is creating an East High community that is made up of support from everyone.