“Midtown Dungeon,” an instagram account created at the beginning of the school year by senior Ward Rentz-Baker, looks to improve school spirit by maximizing attendance at Midtown sports games.
Rentz-Baker’s older brother Keller brought school spirit by attending as many games as possible.
“Keller and his friends would go to all the games and bring a lot of energy,” Rentz-Baker said. “As a freshman, it made the games really fun to go to, and I wanted to try and bring that back for everyone this year.”
Rentz-Baker said he was disappointed by the lack of student support at sports games last year.
“As a school, I felt like people weren’t really going to the games as much as we should have and when we did, there was no hype at all,” Rentz-Baker said. “People would just sit in the bleachers and not even pay attention to what was happening on the court or field. People also didn’t really know when the games were or what the theme was which caused them not to go. We made this account to hopefully make that more clear to try and get more people to attend.”
Senior football player Micah Whiskey said he appreciated how the “dungeon” brought more fans to football games.
“It was great,” Whiskey said. “Having a big student section makes everyone want to do better, so I think looking up, it was very motivating and caused us to play better than we would’ve.”
Sophomore Katherine Dzumia plays on the girls basketball team and noticed how last year other schools had bigger student sections.
“We would go to other schools and their student section would be huge,” Dzumia said. “Them having such a big student section was extremely nerve wracking because it felt like if you messed up, you were going to be made fun of or the crowd would be super loud. This put even more pressure than there already was and, honestly, gave the other team an advantage.”
Senior Hayden Sheehan said having “Midtown Dungeon” has encouraged her to attend more games.
“I think now that it’s more organized it makes it so much easier,” Sheehan said. “I’ve wanted to attend games in the past but I wasn’t really sure when they were and what the theme was. Even though those are two very small things, it kind of led me not to go to them. Now that there’s an account, it just makes it easier for everyone, and there’s been an obvious difference in the student section making it more fun, which will probably make it grow even more.”
Rentz-Baker said he tries to promote all kinds of games, including volleyball, football and basketball right now.
“I think there’s also a chain effect,” Rentz-Baker said. “If one person sees the post for the game and decides to go, they’ll tell their friends and then their friends are going to start going and they’ll tell their friends about it and so on. I also want to try and go to as many different sports as possible, not just the most popular ones like football.”
Rentz-Baker said he understands people cannot attend every game, so he tries to push certain games that he feels the most people can attend.
“I try to really promote the Friday night games because that’s usually when the most people can go,” Rentz-Baker said. “Obviously, it would be nice if we could go to every single game, but that’s not really realistic, and we don’t want people to get bored and stop showing up.”
Sheehan said she has seen the improvement of school spirit at games and around the school.
“I think the Dungeon has been a very powerful tool for the school,” Sheehan said. “It encourages more people to go to the games and make it more fun for them. I think it goes beyond just the games because at the games, you can meet someone there and then see them in the hallway and wave to them. It’s just a great way of getting everyone together.”
