By Gaige Winchester
Sometimes in the wide world of sports a team makes a special connection with a fan. Someone not from the team’s city, county or state. There’s no relationship quite like one between a fan and their team, even if the team is located hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Some Delta students and faculty have made connections with sports teams all over the nation. They all came to follow their teams for different reasons, but one thing seems certain: they’ll be with them no matter what.
Sophomore Daniel Blevins is an avid New York Yankees baseball fan. He said he’s really been a Yankees fan since he’s been able to watch television because his father, also a lifelong fan, always has had Yankees’ games on.
However, junior Eli Arnold came to support his team, the Phoenix Suns, for a completely different reason.
“My friends were making fun of me for not having an NBA team, so I chose the team very last in the conference so they couldn’t call me a bandwagon (jumper),” he said.
Arnold says his most memorable moment while being a Suns fan is when he woke up on March 25, 2017, and saw that Suns guard Devin Booker had 70 points in their matchup the night before with the Boston Celtics.
Some students who are fans of outlying teams have fun rivalries with each other.
Freshman Ryne Brown and freshman Kolten Rhonemus are often found arguing about the NFL’s AFC West division. Brown is a Raiders fan while Rhonemus is a Broncos fan.
Junior Josef Zacek, a big University of Michigan fan, had a memorable experience when he and his tennis coach, Mr. Tim Cleland, made a road trip to Ann Arbor, Mich., and took in one of their basketball games last winter.
Zacek said they walked around campus and checked out different sites. It was his first time there and he had fun and made some great memories.
Health teacher and baseball coach Mr. Seth Paul is an avid Atlanta Braves fan. He’s been a fan since 1991.
“I was seven years old, and they were on TBS which was a TV station that we got,” Paul said. “I watched them almost every day.”
He says the favorite Braves game he’s ever attended was when he was in college at the University of Indianapolis. He had a good group of seven or eight friends, and they saw the Braves take on the Reds in Cincinnati. The Braves lost the game, but it was still his favorite game he’s ever attended because the atmosphere was great.
Every season he watches 75 to 100 of the Braves games on MLB TV. Dedication like that is what it takes. When your team isn’t from your area, it sometimes gets difficult to stay loyal, and involved, but those things are marks of true fans.
