Written by Alyssa Deffner

Everybody knows about football.  Everybody knows about Basketball.  But what about the little sports that people just seem to look over?  Every year, the not so popular sports are just skimmed over.  When will they get their due?  While a Friday night football game gets an entire page, the local tennis team will only get a little blip.  Just how does it make these hard working athletes feel?

When asking around the school, a couple of small sport athletes said how they felt.  Heather Fahrenkrug, a senior swimmer, said that she just felt gypped.  “I just don’t understand why people would put a downer on a sport that’s so difficult.  I just kinda feel cheated sometimes.”  Her teammate Alyssa Deffner, also a senior, chimed in.  “We won sectionals my sophomore year with only eight girls.  After everything, it wasn’t even mentioned in our yearbook.  I pour in hours of hard work and my sport only gets a paragraph in the local paper while football gets the entire page.”  When Heather was asked what she would do about the problem she said, “I think that we should kinda get a little more publicity on the announcements and school newspaper, maybe even word of mouth.

The lack of recognition not only makes the athletes disappointed but also takes away important funding.  Kole Paxton, a senior of boys tennis, commented on their lack of funding.  “We were supposed to get all six of our courts repaved and only four actually got done.  We don’t even have the proper wind break and we practice in the winter time.”  When asked what the team does about it, he responded that “We pay it out of our own pockets or do the work our selves.  We spent one entire Saturday putting up new screens on our courts and still didn’t get it finished.”  When he was asked what he would do about the problem, Kole said, “People should come and watch us and maybe we’d get funding!”  Evan Cather, a senior of boys golf, agreed, "If more people would support the sport we would get more money through the fundraising."

      Kevin Talley, yet another little sport athlete, talks about his experience with hockey.  "It just makes me feel like poop! Its dumb because we do represent our school and have all the same rivalries but don't get the same recognition.  All the times we've played community or gone to championships they don't say anything."  His response on how to fix things were, " The school needs to adopt the sport or at least recognize that we play for West and represent it well."

What kind of message is this sending our little sport athletes?  Not mentioning or even acknowledging these hard working  competitors is telling them that they don't matter.  So what's happening?  Is the reason no one comes out to the sporting events the lack of recognition or just because nobody cares?  When asking senior Elise Bohl, she said, "We don't even know so we don't come.  Its not because we don't want to go it's just that know body ever knows that stuff is going on."  So what's the solution?  People kneed to start recognizing all athletes especially the little ones.