Greeley West hasn’t always had the worst history with sports. There are plenty of pictures of succesful teams around the gyms. But let’s be real: as the years have gone on, the Spartans results are worse and worse. Don’t get me wrong, West has our fair share of sports that are doing okay – especially those that aren’t team sports. However, they just get outweighed by the ones we’re not the best in.
For the most part, Greeley West plays in the 5A division, which means we play against tougher opponents. The reason for this is because of how many students attend our school. So we play schools from Denver, Loveland, Fort Collins… etc. As we find ourselves playing tougher schools, we also see ourselves losing the majority of the time. Losing so often is discouraging which makes the players lose love for the sport most of the time. Other teams have either played on the same team longer so they have a better connection. Others play travel sports/club sports. Playing for a club is pretty expensive – not all people can afford it but it betters athletes’ skills to further them in a sport.
Greeley West has many types of different students who play sports. With sports there are also a lot of different fees they have to worry about such as buying the required equipment and paying registration fees. These things end up adding up. Some students may not have money for equipment, let alone money for club sports. Other schools in the same division have the luxury of having money for these things, so they get more opportunities to better their skills.
Looking at many of the different records for the sports that’s been starting up, it seems like we can’t keep up. There’s been a pattern of losing to those different schools. I guess we can say that losing has become a norm for West because we can’t compete in the division we’re put in.
That may all change tonight when football plays Greeley Central. Today, we make a big deal of this game because we’ll actually have a chance of winning. Greeley Central faces the same challenges we do, so it will be an interesting game between two teams who have combined for three wins – against Adams City, Aurora Central, and Gateway, Look up those schools’ records and you’ll find a league that we should be in.
