Henderson | Small sports are making a big splash for Penn Athletics

Football and men’s basketball. Men’s basketball and football. Men’s basketball. Football.

When it comes to college athletics, these are the two sports that always seem to dominate the conversation. These are the two sports that are inevitably brought up. Every single time. Over and over again.

The other sports hardly seem to stand a chance when it comes to competing for large-scale recognition, even nationally popular sports like baseball and hockey.

Of course, there are regional favorites. Southern states, such as Texas, have shown their fondness for college baseball, while several schools in the Northeast have devoted quite a few resources to their collegiate hockey programs.

But when it comes time for a school’s athletic program to be judged on a national stage, two questions take precedent: How good is its football team, and how good is its men’s basketball team?

Penn is no exception.

Although the school features over 30 different varsity teams, football and men’s basketball still seem to be the only sports universally recognized across campus. And this is despite two relatively lean years for the two flagship sports.

Sports like soccer and women’s basketball certainly get their fair share of recognition, but the rest of Penn’s athletes are left to perform in front of extremely niche audiences.

Don’t get me wrong; it is by no means a bad thing that flagship sports get recognized. I enjoy watching football and basketball as much as the next person, and I certainly understand their consumer appeal.

But where’s the love for the little guys, the lesser-recognized programs? After all, they’re often the ones getting results for Penn Athletics as a whole.

Take this past weekend for example.

Several teams came through with impressive personal achievements. Gymnastics took down Yale in a tight contest, posting its highest team score in over a year. Both swimming squads cruised past Delaware on their Senior Day.

Other squads showcased their stellar individual talent. After deciding not to compete last year to focus on academics, senior grappler C.J. Cobb has impressed all season for the wrestling team. Meanwhile, junior thrower Sam Mattis continued his streak of individual excellence for track and field.

And still other squads were simply flat-out dominant. Men’s tennis made quick work of the competition in the inaugural City 6 tournament, while both men’s and women’s fencing had very impressive showing at home over the weekend.

Now honestly, when is the last time you heard somebody discussing the state of the fencing program on Locust Walk?

Given, it’s a little bit easier to recognize the successes of the school’s smaller athletic programs over a weekend during which its bigger programs also took care of business. In this case, men’s hoops upset St. Joseph’s in front of a packed Palestra, while women’s hoops blew out NJIT by 30.

But the accomplishments of Penn’s under-recognized teams extend beyond only this past weekend. In fact, the vast majority of Penn’s most-accomplished individual performers — including runner Tom Awad, swimmers Rochelle Dong and Chris Swanson and grappler Lorenzo Thomas, to name a few — come from these programs.

Additionally, some of the school’s most successful squads in recent years — such as women’s squash, which is currently No. 2 in the nation, and women’s lacrosse — are criminally under-recognized.

As I have already noted, this is not a unique problem to Penn Athletics, and there may not be much that the athletic administration can do to fix it.

But I will say this much. There are quite a few teams wearing the Red and Blue competing on a daily basis, and their successes clearly matter to them. It shows in the results.

Maybe it’s about time that the rest of the Penn community starts taking their accomplishments to heart as well.

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