If I could use only one word to describe Metro’s volleyball team, while at the same time avoiding some more prominent sports clichés (such as winners or losers, strong or weak), it would be “devoted.”

They are devoted to staying on top and bringing home the conference title. The coaches have implemented a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to losing. The players do not make up excuses about poor defense. The team takes it very seriously when they lose a game, but they do not dwell on the fact or let it keep them down.

The Roadrunners are devoted to giving the best performance they can, winning and losing regardless. The team brings everything they have to the court with them, at least in the RMAC games. The players are very dramatic about preventing the ball from hitting their side of the court, and they avoid this like the plague. Whatever you want to call it — be it teamwork, confidence, or strength — the team definitely has some unifying thread holding them together.
Where most teams get hyped up by mentally envisioning their opponents as weak, the Roadrunners’ determination is fed by their own weaknesses and downfalls.

The areas where they perform poorly one weekend are given twice the effort the following week.

The senior players have a job building confidence between themselves and the newer players, and their confidence level can be witnessed on the court.

The Roadrunners are devoted to coming in first in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
Now, I’m not what you’d call a sports enthusiast; in fact, I had no interest at all in sports in general until I started reporting on them this year.

I have never been involved with sports, aside from high school wrestling for one year and the occasional one-mile run in gym class. The first time I had ever been to a volleyball game was only a month ago, but the question is this: If the volleyball team is so devoted to their purpose, why aren’t the fans?

The fans I see at the games are mostly family members, close friends, and other sports faculty.
You would think that since our college doesn’t have a football team there would be a higher fan turnout supporting volleyball. Of course, basketball and baseball are more popular, stereotypically. I know I would never have been seen at a sporting event, let alone volleyball, until reporting opened my eyes to it.

Why? Because nobody got me interested in sports. I don’t think our college sports are advertised as fully as they could be. For most universities, sports is everything. There has got to be way to increase audiences for these games.

I have always wondered if shouting and cheering from the fans really does have a psychological impact on the players’ performance.

If this were the case, it couldn’t hurt Metro’s volleyball team to encourage more people to come to their games. Do people really care about winning or losing, or is it just the thrill of the whole sports experience? And if not a single person came to a game, would there be any reason to play? What came first? Well, you get the point.

With this in mind, I leave readers with this last question: How much impact can fans really have on a team’s determination and performance?