By Emma Grossman
If you go to WHS, chances are you’ve been “invited” to attend a sporting event for the Rangers on Facebook at some point in your high school career. If you have indeed been invited to attend said sporting event, and haven’t actually gone, let me tell you something: you’re missing out. Big time.
The energy that Westborough fans supply to their players is unreal. I can honestly say, as an avid member of any Ranger fan section, that it has been my favorite part of high school thus far. The best part of being in the fan section is the fact that everybody there is on the same team; whether you are best friends with the kid standing next to you or you’ve passed by them in the halls just once before, it doesn’t matter. Everyone becomes friends for the night when they’re up in the stands, chanting and cheering along with the rest of the school.
You might think, “Do the fan sections even help energize the players?” To answer that question, I asked Senior Volleyball Captain Kaylie Doherty, who helped lead her team to the state finals this season, just how much the fans get the players pumped up. Doherty replied, “The fans this season were so incredible, we honestly could not have asked for better people up in those stands. So many students came out to every single one of our playoff games and we are more grateful for that than any fan will ever know. Having so many people up there cheering and screaming really got us excited and got our blood flowing even more; we wanted to win every game for the fans, too, because they were one of the real reasons why we were so successful this year.”
The fans not only get the players excited and ready to go, they energize each other, as well. Attending as many games as I have throughout my past three years of high school I can tell you there’s nothing like being a Ranger. Although the saying “I have Ranger Fever!” is tossed around at games and at school as sort of a joke, it is also extremely true. This fictitious illness was made up many years ago, and lives on as a tradition at WHS, used to describe those die-hard Ranger fans everyone can easily hear screaming their heads off at any games they can attend. Watch out, though, because if you find yourself at any sports game where the Rangers are taking on our rivals, the Algonquin Tomahawks, you can almost be certain you’ll catch Ranger Fever, too (it’s pretty contagious).
Even if you aren’t the loudest kid out in the stands, or if you don’t like sports all that much, I strongly encourage you to go to at least one game. Just one. I can promise you won’t dislike the rush you get from chanting “I believe that we will win” along with 100 of your closest peers. In fact, you might just love it.
