The Texas State Historical Association confirmed the state’s widespread fame for football with other sports falling behind with their incomparable number of fans.
Sophomore Heidi Vasek has been playing golf for two years and quickly noticed the lack of publicity for the sport she loves.
“It’s really frustrating to tell people about how I’m on the golf team and they’ll stop for a second and be like ‘there’s a golf team?’” she said.
Not only do golfers believe that they do not get much exposure, freshman tennis player Taylor Weinholzer relates to the situation.
“We live in Texas and Texas is a predominately football-focused state,” he said. “Naturally, people are going to shy away from sports like tennis, but when they ignorantly say that tennis isn’t a real sport, that’s when I want to invite them to practice with us to put them in their place.”
Senior Logan Hess has been playing golf since his freshman year and stresses the fact that any sport takes dedication, talent and strength of the body and mind, and therefore deserves the same respect and recognition.
“Everyone makes jokes about how so many sports aren’t considered real sports and that’s fine and dandy, but if those people tried whatever it is they’re talking about then they’d know how ignorant they truly are,” he said.
Head cross country and girl’s track coach Jennifer Gegogeine said that she believes for the most part that individual sports get small amounts of recognition.
“Even if the student body isn’t involved first hand, they probably know someone who is,” she said. “Involving more of the student body to participate and cheer our students on could get them more pumped.”
Sophomore golfer Brandon Marlowe said the lack of support from the student body does not faze him.
“There are only a handful of people that are truly good at golf and I like to think over the past year or two I’ve gotten in that group,” he said. “The bottom line is that if you’re good and you know you’re good, then you don’t need to worry about what other people think.”
Sophomore wrestler Dillon Soderberg said he feels as though there is not a way to get the students interested in wrestling and other individual sports but that does not stop him from trying.
“There’s so much talk about football that sports like wrestling have to fight to get a word in every now and then,” he said. “It’s worth it.”
