Opinion: Intramural and amateur sports are kicking off this spring, and this is a reminder to go to your friends’ games and cheer way too proudly for them. It’s more fun that way.

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It’s Sunday, April 3, 7:48 p.m. PST, and a building buzz of anticipation envelopes The Rink Exchange ahead of a culmination of competition akin to a Super Bowl. The underdog Americans were set to battle the higher-seeded Bengals in the Rink Exchange Hockey “Beer League” B-bracket final. However, this level of energy is somewhat foreign to the beer league, as RHL player and third-year Trevor Scannell admitted, the games usually “only get about five people that show up to watch, max.”
A group of friends, family and I more than doubled the attendance and formed a pseudo-student-section to cheer for our friends on the Americans. Our sold-out crowd jumped out of our absolutely free seats watching a beer league barn burner, and our friends on the Americans ended up lifting the trophy after a game-winning goal in overtime.
“That was the first time I’ve heard the crowd while on the ice. It definitely made the game way more exciting,” Blake Nash-Laboe, third-year student and player on the winning Americans team, said. “Both sides wanted to put on a performance for the crowds, and I think it made the game more fun to watch and definitely to play in.”
It felt good to support my friends, and even more meaningful for them. Harry Johnson, a first-year student who plays for the local amateur lacrosse team Hop Valley, expressed his appreciation for his friends who can make it out to watch him play the sport he has been playing since his childhood.
“A crazy amount of hours have gone into playing over the years,” Johnson said. “And it feels pretty awesome when the people you surround yourself with take the time out of their day to come support and appreciate the work you put in.”
When I initially told my friends to come with me to the beer league game Sunday night, it was mainly just to support my other friends — and maybe as a gag, since the games aren’t usually taken that seriously. But, after the game, I realized how much fun I had. I suppose I didn’t really expect to, not to scoff at my friends, but it is amateur. It wasn’t like it was the NHL.
Although, it was fun to support it that seriously.
My observation with amateur and intramural-level sports is that the real competition is who can take it more seriously without appearing like they are. In truth, everyone playing wants to win. Yet revealing your competitive fire on field three of The Rec on some random Tuesday evening rightfully feels unnecessarily intense. That same notion mirrors the support for said games; if the game isn’t intense then the spectators shouldn’t be either, so why bother showing up.
That’s lame. It’s already difficult enough to support your friends in their hobbies or talents; you can’t exactly cheer them on as they edit a video or research a thesis. So if you have friends who enjoy playing a sport, which is inherently exciting to watch and natural to cheer for, why wouldn’t you go watch?
Obviously, there are other things in your life that take you away from the pinnacle sporting arena of field three at The Rec, and just watching someone else play for an hour can sound boring. “People say, ‘I’m going to go watch,’ but you’re really there to chat with your friends and cheer,” Ellie Johnson, a third-year student and veteran intramural athlete, said. “It’s much more of a social event that way.”
There’s merit to supporting your friends in their hobbies, but past that, it makes the whole experience much more enjoyable for everyone if there are spectators at the game. The more people there, the more animated the fans can be, the more energized the players are, the more exciting the game turns out to be.
Fans playing along with the masquerade of competition at amateur and intramural sports is nobly hilarious. Many of the players have never heard someone cheer them on for anything or haven’t since their athletic glory days of high school sports. Contributing to the charade of the game feeling important enough to cheer about for just an hour or so is that nobility. Getting far too invested in events, that on the grand scheme have only slight significance in life, is the soul of sports, essentially. Thus, supporting and playing harder than you think you should are the most fun parts of the amateur sports experience.