If you attend one of the various Hawk sports games on the Hilltop, you’ll likely notice that there is usually something missing … student support.

One of the benefits of attending Saint Anselm is that there typically is no admission fee for students at home sporting events. So then why doesn’t the student body show more fan support for our athletic teams?

There are some teams on campus that do attract relatively large attendance compared to others. According to the Saint Anselm Athletics website, football has the highest average attendance (1206 fans per home game) thus far in the 2016-2017 academic year.

In a distant second is men’s ice hockey with an average of 479 fans per home game, and in third is men’s basketball with 367 fans per home game.

With regard to women’s sports, ice hockey has been the highest attended female sport with an average of 241 fans per home game with field hockey coming in second at an average of 208 fans per home game.

You have to figure that a chunk of these numbers include parents of student-athletes on each team. In addition a number of greater Manchester fans of Saint Anselm also attend our games. That then underlines even further how few students cheer on their classmates.

The attendance numbers also do not necessarily line up with how successful each team has been either. Of the four teams listed above, field hockey had the lowest average attendance, and they competed in the Division II national semi-finals this past season. This is not only the first time the field hockey program made it that far in the national playoffs, but it was also the furthest any Hawk team has reached in the NCAA playoffs.

By the time the postseason had rolled around, the attendance numbers did rise in support of Hawk field hockey. The NCAA quarterfinals against Stonehill were held at Saint Anselm and there were an estimated 457 people in attendance. Slightly better than the average attendance, but still not an extraordinary amount of people for the phenomenal work of these lady Hawks.

Women’s basketball is another team that does not receive a lot of support, especially given how well they have done in recent years. Last season they made it to the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time since 1999, and this year they are in the mix again. Despite this, there has only been an average of 185 people at their home games this season.

All of our teams, especially those which have fared well, deserve more support from the student population, which is just under 2000. With the support of the Saint Anselm community, the Hilltop could manifest a true home field advantage for our sports teams. They certainly deserve it.