The essence of support

Facing battles would never be the same without a bunch of people screaming and showing support. In all the games I have watched, support has turned double-digit disadvantages with just a few minutes left in the game into victories sports leagues and spectators would remember for years and even decades after.

Lasallians, in my view, have been and will continue to be the audience to beat when it comes to support for the teams they believe in. Throughout DLSU’s participation in the UAAP, many supporters have been known to go as far as provoking a fight to prove that DLSU is better than Ateneo, UST, UP and the like.

The downside though is that Lasallians have weighed some teams more than others. Hence, many Lasallians do not even know some of the performing sports teams and clubs in DLSU. Moreover, since very few Lasallians support the less-popular sports, even fewer people talk about them, which has further decreased their popularity.

The dictionary defines support as something that can hold up, sustain, or withstand. In other words, it holds something together and prevents it from falling down. This simple word has and will continue to spell the difference between a win and a loss. The great thing about support is that even the losing team players get a chance to feel like victors.

Way back in high school and much like many of DLSU’s sports teams, I experienced receiving support from my school community. I was a member of my school’s robotics team back then. With the help of my school and our community, my team bagged the world championship in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO).

We were lucky back then since the Philippines hosted the event. Our parents, classmates and schoolmates attended and watched us compete. We had an advantage many of the teams did not have. We had support. My teammates and I felt like we were playing in our comfort zone, which had helped us focus on winning for the country and for our school.

We had to go against 23 countries, which seemed daunting during that time. We also had to make sure that the robots performed systematically and without errors. But as we went through with our five-minute presentation in the WRO, everything became easier since we received so much support from our school and the audience. We never thought that we could even touch the gold let alone win it.

I learned the real meaning of receiving backup and bracing oneself to compete for a community and a school back then. It is something that I will always recall during the month of November; my team bagged the championship exactly two years ago.

Placing our mark in history by producing 24 robots in a single presentation is something we did not expect out of a team of four high school students. Truth be told, the shouts and cheers from the people behind us helped us bag that gold.

Going back to DLSU, I know for a fact that Lasallians are good sports patrons. Many truly embody the Animo spirit in them as they show their support for La Salle’s athletes.

Moreover, Lasallians are giving the athletes the right kind of support many of the players need to compete and perform in their competitions. Support is the best fuel for every athlete’s desire to win. It makes goals easier to reach, and it makes winning even more fulfilling.

Despite showing tons of support for popular sports in the UAAP, most Lasallians have, however, forgotten the other squads who also don the Green-and-White jerseys. Hence, many less-known UAAP sports are often taken for granted as even those who are good sports patrons usually forget the athletes who have even been excelling more than those from the most popular teams.

Moreover, many athletes from the less popular teams have started to lose interest in their respective sports simply because few are there to support them. I could only imagine how many athletes who are competing in the less-popular sports feel in the UAAP.

In every competition, the goal of each team is to banner the name of DLSU and to bag the top spot. A defeat, however, does not pull Lasallians down. Case in point, in the UAAP season 74, the Green Archers fell to a dismal finish, but many Lasallians continued and still continue to support them.

With an improved number of patrons of different sports, DLSU could just take away its first ever General Championship in the UAAP, and now that the second half of the UAAP is about to start, question is, will we be relying on the teams we have never supported?

Then again, it is never too late to start showing some support right?