In the midst of Snowpocalpyse, PC students received an e-mail from Coach Greg Nibert of the Men’s Basketball team encouraging them to continue supporting the men’s hoops team and to continue to provide the team with a “Home Court Advantage.” While some might ask why a soon to be (soon apparently being a relative term) Division 1 school would need to receive a request like this, this writer understands that between the strenuous academic requirement of PC and the constant struggle to find a way into ticketed CEP (an hour, really?) some students may be confused as to what this “Home Court Advantage (from here on out referred to as HCA)” might refer to, therefore, please accept this as a humble attempt to enlighten the masses.
Wikipedia (the best of all sources) defines HCA as “ an advantage–usually a psychological advantage–that the home team is said to have over the visiting team as a result of playing in familiar facilities and in front of supportive fans.” That sounds nice enough, but many of you probably see it as just a bunch of words, so I have here a three-step program that should lead PC to a new era of excitement at sporting events.
Step 1: Attendance
The first step of building this advantage is being at the game. As seen in the two games that occurred the first week of school, 2000 fans are louder than 500. For you math majors, 2000 > 500. This idea doesn’t only exist in Basketball either; it can be applied to all sports. To put it simply, athletes enjoy playing in front of people. On a side note, like in class, attendance is counted over the entire game. Leaving at half-time tends to have a deflating effect on the atmosphere at an event. Once a crowd of people have gathered in a location where a sporting event is occurring, we can move on to…
Step 2: Cheering
“Cheering is the uttering or making of sounds encouraging, stimulating or exciting to action, indicating approval or acclaiming or welcoming persons, announcements of events and the like.” Once at a sporting event, fans are often seen standing and shouting words of encouragement to their own team (in our case the one generally in the blue and white) and words of discouragement to the visiting team. When cheering against the visiting team the general hope is that they will become so discouraged or even disoriented that their play will suffer, while the opposite is hoped for during positive cheering. If a large crowd comes together and proceeds to cheer, that should lead us to…
Step 3: Winning
The ultimate goal of HCA is that team will use the excitement generated by their fans to defeat their opponents. When teams are winning, it generally makes it easier to be excited at the events and cheer, thus beginning a circle of more winning and more cheering, on and on and on into infinity.
There you have it. By following these simple steps, we, the PC community, can begin building an athletic tradition at PC that will make us proud to return to sporting events years from now and be proud of the athletic programs that represent our school to the world.