Mustang sports: Underrated and never duplicated
This year’s MV/WV gymnastics team has broken so many barriers and made history multiple times; yet, no one knows about it.
Let’s just say this team is Conference Champions, Regional Champions, third in their Sectional, and sending three girls to state on February 18th, one of which is a Mustang. Elizabeth (Nina) Brandenburg has qualified for state for the second year in a row on the floor exercise. But this article isn’t meant to brag about our girls’ gymnastics team; it’s to raise the question of why we haven’t been hearing about all of the wonderful things this team has been doing since the beginning? Conference was almost a month ago. I bet you could name at least 5 speechies that placed at their last meet and not one gymnast on the gymnastics team. Why is that?
And it’s not just gymnastics, but girls’ basketball, girls’ bowling, boys’ wrestling, and all of the rest of the winter sports that have gone with little to no recognition. “A basketball game is just more exciting to watch then a wrestling match,” senior Amber Moore said. I can be realistic and admit that gymnastics nor bowling are very exciting sporting events to watch, but does that mean that those athletes should be commended any less than say, our boys’ basketball team? “It’s extremely irritating;” senior Amira Turner said “the girls’ basketball team has had one slide on the TVs all season”.
Let’s be honest you and your friends discredit the bowling team but when you and your friends roll up to Brunswick you ask for the bumpers, proving that all sports, exciting or not, assume their own levels of difficulty, “I don’t think people recognize certain sports because they either don’t care or they don’t have friends on the team to support,” senior Ajeenah Johnson-Brown said.
Understandably so, we as teenagers have minds that filter out everything that isn’t interesting, doesn’t apply to us, or hasn’t proven to be relevant, and that’s okay.I’m not saying ditch your friends for the bowling tournament next Friday night, but maybe, in honor of Random Act of Kindness week, tell a bowler they did a good job, or pat Austin Graham, state qualifying wrestler, on the back. It may seem stupid to you, but to someone who’s never commended for their accomplishments, it could mean the world.