The Disgrace that is D-Block
ATLAS hopes that attendance will increase due to this new program. This low attendance is shown in D-Block during a game last season.
“What time is it? Titan Time!”. Yes, you heard that right if you were still one of the 20 people left in D-Block. The parents took over chanting duties from Dominion’s student section in the 3rd and 4th quarter of Dominion’s Varsity Football game vs Heritage last Friday night. As a result, Titan parents started chanting the name of the students study hall period, “Titan Time”.
That’s what our school spirit has came down to now. Parents, who do not even attend our school, chanting the name Dominion student’s study hall. D-Block is irrelevant now, and has been for the past couple seasons.
If you show up halfway through the first quarter of Titan football game you would think to yourself, “This school has really good spirit. The stands are full, the kids are cheering, everyone’s loud, and everyone has cool spirit wear.” It’s great. There is one problem though. Kids do not come to these games to actually watch the football or show everyone their school spirit. Kids get bored around the middle of the second quarter (no matter the score), and get up and leave.
Friday night’s game sold 802 tickets for the game, and that does not include the 323 year around sporting event passes issued out at the beginning of the year. 1,125 people could be at a Titan football game at one time. Obviously not all people with year round passes attended, but the number could definitely be upwards of 1,000 people. By the end of the 4th quarter there were only 20 people in our student section cheering on our Titans as they headed into overtime.
Last Friday night Dominion won in a thrilling contest where they prevailed on a goal line stop in overtime to win 21-14. It was a super exciting game from the start as Dominion jumped out to a 14-0 lead, but then surrendered it in the 4th quarter. At the end of the second quarter, as Dominion was up 14-0, nearly 75% of Dominion’s student section was gone. Then nearly 95% of all the students that were here were gone by the end of the 3rd quarter. Heritage’s student section at the end of overtime had more students left in their student section then in ours.
Dominion’s Student Council Association have done an extremely poor job making football games engaging and making students want to stay in D-Block for a lot of the game. All SCA does is tell people what the spirit week is, but does not do anything to make sure it happens or make sure people actually attend the games. They have a very poor presence at football games, and do not do a good job at making sure that people actually are cheering and having a good time. The President of SCA, Zach Davis, and the Vice President, Gina Wilson, along with other members in SCA all attend the football games, but by halftime almost all of the members of SCA were gone. Once over time began there were literally 20 kids still standing in D-Block. 1 of the 20 kids remaining was Anna Gill, SCA’s Secretary. If SCA cares at all about our student section or about our school spirit, then they would stay for majority of the games, and keep leading chants.
The main reason that people attend football games are to pose for pictures in their spirit wear for Instagram or Snapchat. I know that I am victim to this one myself. If you open up Instagram after a Friday night football game you will see over hundreds of photos of people with their friends not even watching the game. Kids just want the photos of them showing their school “spirit” by taking a few pictures, posting, then leaving. At any given time there is at least one group of friends in the stands posing for pictures. Both guys and girls will stand with their backs to the games for maybe upwards of 5-10 minutes in order to take the right picture with the right friend combination.
If our student section wants to actually have a purpose besides pictures, then SCA needs to actually attend school events. What happened Friday night can never happen again, but it will keep happening if the leaders of our school spirit do not actually put in an effort to keep it alive.
Ian Whitfield has been a part of DHS press since 2016 and branched out from from his newspaper roots into broadcasting. Whitfield is the color commentator...
Brad George • Oct 4, 2018 at 8:10 am
D-Block, three great opportunities over the next few days to come out, show your school spirit, and support your athletic teams– tonight, volleyball is at home against Woodgrove. Your UNDEFEATED freshman volleyball team plays in the AUX gym at 5:45 and the JV team plays in the Main Gym at the same time. Then Varsity plays the Wolverines at 7:15. It’s Dig Pink Night, so wear your pink! If you’d rather be outside, field hockey plays Culpeper at 6:00 PM tonight at Potomac Falls. And on Saturday evening, you can come out and support the cheerleaders as they compete in the Dominion Invitational Cheer Competition at home in the Main Gym. D-Block, here’s your chance to pack the stands tonight and on Saturday!
Gary • Oct 3, 2018 at 10:24 pm
You are in no position to speak on these terms considering you are one of those people that leaves the games.
adviser • Oct 4, 2018 at 10:03 am
Ian is part of the broadcasting team that is there all game, every home game on the air.
Jillian • Oct 3, 2018 at 4:17 pm
The Heritage game pales in comparison to the Riverside game this past week.
Possibly 75 people came to represent D-Block at the Riverside game and by half-time, maybe 30 were left.
By the fourth quarter, maybe five people were left sitting in D-Block and then they moved over to sit in the parent section!
William • Oct 3, 2018 at 7:49 am
Does this only apply to football? How many girl’s soccer or girl’s lacrosse games have you gone to?
VCottrell • Oct 2, 2018 at 12:19 pm
Ian, very well written and I agree that our D-block spirit has dwindled significantly. I see it at our Varsity volleyball games, too. Selfies, doing homework in the stands, goofing off….parents are doing most of the cheering. Without parents there wouldn’t be much noise. Same applies to Homecoming attendance which has hit a new low. Apathy or indifference at home games is a sad thing to see. Opposing teams cheer louder at our home games than we do! If the school wants to increase attendance perhaps offer some kind of incentive or let Loudoun County students get in free on occasion. Make every home game an event of some kind. Why not catapult shirts or gifts into the audience or offer giveaways to the first 25 fans who come to the game? Or do a raffle using the actual tickets sold. Or ask students to text their great pics that night to a certain # and the school can post these every week on their website! Get one of those giant glow beach balls and let kids toss it around during the game. We need something fun to resurrect the DHS spirit. Let’s start now by changing it up and making game time fun. Let’s engage the fans more.