By Andrew Browning
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For the last three years, the CHS football team has proven it can compete with the top football programs in the state. After two runner-up finishes and a State title, the team has shown it is capable of greatness year in and year out, and in return the Hounds should expect nothing less than the best from their fans. However, what have CHS students given them in terms of fan support?

Last year, home games nearly became a civil war between the Junior and Senior Class, but fans still looked on as the team pulled out enough wins to make it to Lucas Oil. To credit the student body, CHS students arrived en masse and were behind the Hounds 100 percent for three solid quarters. But when the Carmel side got complacent as time ticked away, the Trojan fans and team came back with a vengeance to steal the show.

Now the team has graduated key components of its backfield, secondary and offensive line. Those losses suggest the team’s chances to make a fourth consecutive trip to the State championship appear, well, not so great. With that in mind, students need to recognize that if the Hounds are going to make it back to the top, then they’re going to need all the help they can get from the student body.

It’s time for kids to forget about inter-class rivalries and midgame gossip that take the focus away from the game itself. Nobody should have any self-reservation about getting loud. It’s a football game. The screaming, chanting and cheering is what’s going to help drive the players to fight for that extra yard or to hold their blocks another second, even when their bodies are wearing down late in the fourth quarter.

When you couple one of the top athletic programs in the state along with an enormous student body, that should be a recipe for a raucous, energetic Friday night football atmosphere. For some reason, though, it seems like Carmel students have never quite put two and two together. This year’s leaders of Big Game and Wild Bunch need to step up so there is some method to the madness and a solid display of organized cheering. But after that, it’s up to the students. Is Carmel Stadium on Friday nights a place to watch a football game or a nice chance to socialize? That distinction could help propel an inexperienced team towards a State title. And that’s what everyone should be cheering for.

Andrew Browning is a reporter for the Hilite.