Since the Fanatics inception in 2006, the Fanatics have received praise and complaints. The main grievance the Fanatics receive concerns their lack of attendance to less popular sports and less popular games.
“We are trying to increase the overall fan experience at every athletic competition,” Gabe Golob ‘16 said.
“We are going to incorporate new fun cheers at basketball games such as the roller coaster and may- be even a silent night.”
With the first games of league play underway, the head fanatics are looking forward to increased turnout at games.
“We’ve seen some good show outs, but we’re definitely trying to get more and more people to come to the games,” Noah Rothman ‘16 said. “We haven’t had home foot- ball games in a while, but we have Homecoming and Senior Night coming up, which I think will bring a lot of energy. People are very excited for basketball season, and I think more and more fanatics will start coming out.”
The fanatics hope to create an encouraging home environment for Wolverine athletes, while also creating an unfriendly environment for opposing teams.
“The goal for the fanatics for the rest of the year is to create a hostile environment for opposing teams and an exciting environment for our teams,” Mike Mapes ‘16 said. “Nothing is more fun than for a team to play in front of a large and loud home crowd. We hope to give this experience to as many teams and games as we can.”
The five seniors were chosen by last year’s head fanatics. This year, Alexandria Oser ‘16 becomes the third ever female to be a head fanatic. The other four head fanatics are Mapes, Nick Richmond ‘16, Golob and Rothman. “I think the goal of the fanatics every year should be to increase the popularity of all sports on campus and make sure that every team gets to have a ‘home court advantage’ when they play at Harvard-West- lake,” Golob said.
Social media is a tool that the fanatics use often. The HW Fanatics ‘15-’16 Facebook page has over 400 members, and is used frequently by the head fanatics to announce where and when games will be held. The page is also used to update students on the results of games.
“We, of course, want to increase fan attendance to all sports so we’re using social media as a tool even more than in the past,” Richmond said. Students believe the fanatics have been doing a good job so far this year about increasing interest in going to sporting events.
“The fanatics group is very good at hyping events up and encourages attendance,” Keon Niknejad ‘17 said. “I’m not sure if it actually increases attendance, but it definitely gets the word out.”
But maybe this years’ fanatics are different.
“I feel that turnouts for athletic events have been larger this year when compared with years past,” Hailey de la Vara ‘17 said.
