A Noticeable Lack of School Spirit
Santa Clara students sit in the stands on Oct. 25, 2025, during a women’s soccer match against USF. (Nina Glick/The Santa Clara)
When Jalen Williams ’22 came to campus at the start of this school year to celebrate his newfound NBA Champion status, it wasn’t the Larry O’Brien Trophy that he brought with him or the highlight reels from his years of basketball that buzzed around my head for weeks after the fact.
Rather, it was an offhanded comment he made about the size of the student section: things hadn’t seemed to change since his time in college. The student section only seems well-attended when Gonzaga comes to town.
Hearing that from such a distinguished alumnus got me thinking: why is it that we have so many D1 teams, yet the attendance at their games seems lackluster at best? After all, we have 18 different athletic teams and many of them have home games within walking distance of campus.
Since that moment, I’ve started going to more sporting events, mainly women’s soccer. And aside from the family members and a few groups of students in the home seating section, the remaining half of the stadium is almost completely empty.
It’s not like these games aren’t entertaining. Some of the soccer games have come down to the final minutes, and I’m invested—even if I don't personally know any of the players.
Some students might say that they don’t show up to games because the teams aren’t good enough or because they’re too busy. But pride shouldn’t be conditional or dependent on the success of your team, and at a school as small as Santa Clara University, cheering and support could actually make a difference in a game.
Take the Oct. 11 Oklahoma State University vs. University of Houston college football game, where hundreds of shirtless football fans crowded into a single section, twirling their shirts above their heads. The event started a trend, with similar crowds of fans replicating the incident at other major universities like the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Wisconsin.
What stood out most about this to me is that this mass of fans came together and found joy in a game that they lost 39-17. OSU’s football team is 1-6 on the year, and yet their fans are still finding a sense of camaraderie at their sporting events.
Why can’t we have such enthusiasm here? Everyone’s busy, but showing up for a few games every month isn’t a huge time commitment. If you can play Clash Royale or scroll on TikTok for hours every week, then I think you have the willpower to come watch a game or two.
This trend seems to extend beyond the sports field as well. On a typical walk around campus, it’s not uncommon to see students wearing sweatshirts from other larger institutions from their hometowns—the University of Washington seems to have a stranglehold on the Seattle natives.
This is embarrassing. If you take a 20 minute drive north, I think that you would be hard-pressed to find any single Stanford University Cardinal wearing merch from any college other than their own. If we can’t even take legitimate pride in the school that we have chosen there’s no way that we can find that same pride in our sports teams.
Another common complaint that I hear from students all the time is that we don’t have a football team. And to that, I would have to reference my best friend of 10 years, a student at Gonzaga University. Despite their lack of a football team, he has sent me pictures of students camping out for basketball tickets. Their basketball student section is entirely full every game, a common trend that I see at other Jesuit colleges like Saint Mary’s College or Creighton University, also without football teams.
We aren’t getting a football team anytime soon. So we have to take pride in the sports teams that we do have, instead of just showing up for the few games a year that everyone goes to.
Just imagine the reaction that Jalen Williams would have if the next time that he came to campus, he saw a student section filled to the brim with Bronco fans.