Loyola is known for many things: its Jesuit tradition, its liberal education and a focus on social justice.

Notice none of the things mentioned above is sports related.

Our sports teams are largely unnoticed in the bigger spectrum of Loyola.

An even more overlooked sector is the club sports.

Did you know the university has a competitive sailing team that has traveled to New York and Texas to compete?

Or that we previously had a lacrosse team? Ice hockey?

Let’s focus on one of these teams: ice hockey. Many would have never expected a school in New Orleans to offer this, even as a club sport (just to make a note, Tulane University and Louisiana State University also have ice hockey teams).

Less would have thought a small Jesuit university like Loyola would have such a sport in particular. Even fewer knew we did. And when the team disintegrated this year, even less missed it.

I understand how these teams can be overlooked when no one knows about them. When I attended a hockey game, the only fans present were the person I dragged along and me.

I don’t know what I was anticipating when I arrived, but how could I have expected club sports to have large attendance numbers when our primetime sports — basketball and baseball, for example — are struggling to bring in fans?

More importantly, if no one knows about the sports, how can they continue? A reason the ice hockey team fell apart is largely due to this lack of recognition. As the group of people who started it graduated, it began to slip through the cracks.

Most of these teams vanished with little or no trace.

All evidence that remains can be found in an equipment closet on the fourth floor of the Freret Street parking garage. Here lies a graveyard of hockey skates, lacrosse helmets, jerseys, sticks, etc.

These are valuable pieces of equipment. Equipment for hockey can cost $500-$1000 per person or even more. Lacrosse equipment can be just as expensive. It seems silly to have this stuff rotting in some storage closet.

I understand the difficulty in finding people willing to play these sports, but a lot of Loyola students are from places where these sports are prominent and grew up playing them. Students unfamiliar with the games may be interested in learning.

Perhaps Loyola should better advertise these club sports and promote re-formation of the teams. If they were to make it better known to incoming students, the teams could grow. It’s wasteful to just let the money the school puts into these teams go to waste.

Leigh Pechon can be reached at [email protected]