All it took was one play. One play that, in an instant, sent the crowd into absolute pandemonium. And I can assure you of one thing: Any college student section in the country would have been proud of the eruption that ensued after the football team scored the winning touchdown against Warren Central on Nov. 4. It was the roar of a crowd that far surpassed any roar I have ever heard. And then there was the entire student body rushing the field to congratulate its team—a moment that all of the players and students involved will remember and cherish for a long, long time.

Moments like these remind us all why our culture finds sports so incredibly captivating. Only a game like this one has the capability of bringing a school together the way it came together that night. People at this school get excited about many different subjects and events, but rarely do we have the opportunity to all be excited about the same thing.

That’s what sports do. Sports bring us together when nothing else can. Sports allow a school and a community to rally around a single team. Sports let us forget, for a few hours at a time, about everything else in our lives and focus on only one thing – the game.

That memorable Friday night, “Greyhound Nation” gave us a good look at what coming together as one really looks like. Dressed in all blue and without a seat to be found in the entire place, the community lived and died with every snap of the ball. For 48 minutes of riveting football, everyone in the stands and on the field held their collective breaths with anxiety and anticipation. This game was about the players on the field, but it was also about more than that. It was one community versus another. That is what sports do. They allow communities to rally together around one team. Never was this more evident than 45 minutes before kickoff when I looked around the stadium and was hard-pressed to locate an empty seat. Or when I logged on to my Twitter account the night before the game and saw that #greyhoundnation was trending in the Indianapolis area. That is called support. That is why this school knows nothing other than excellence in every area possible.

The reason we love sports so much can be summed up completely in what occurred after the game was over. On the field, it went from one team’s celebration to one school’s celebration. Hundreds of students swarmed a team full of players who could not have possibly supplied them with a more exhilarating few hours of entertainment. And there was one thing that was very noticeable about everyone on the field: There was not a single person on the field who was not smiling from ear to ear. Only a few people standing on the field at that time had actually played in the game that night, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because, although the players won the game, the community could call that victory its own. “Greyhound Nation” could sleep soundly that night. Not only did they win on the field, but they won as a community. For one night, everyone in the stands was part of one big, happy family.