Students at St. Paul Academy and Summit School tend to focus on the real, exhausting, action-packed games which the Boys Varsity football team plays routinely in the fall. However, there’s another world outside of the playing field for football players: a world which goes unnoticed by students. This elusive athletic realm is the boy’s locker room.

It sounds like a pretty boring place–there are a few showers, bathrooms and… residual sweat from years of SPA football players. All of these observations (and smells) are accurate but what most students don’t know about the locker room is that it hosts many of the football teams’ pregame rituals.

“Before each game we listen to this song called ‘Master of Puppets.’ We turn the lights off [in the locker room] and we all envision ourselves making good plays. It just gets us really pumped up,” junior Louie Bogolub said.

Equally occult is the fact that junior Jonah Mische brings large white trash bags full of day old Brueggers bagels into the boys locker room for his team. These bagels, cleverly disguised (or functionally transported) are meant to fuel players before games. Mische partakes in the football teams ritualistic ‘Master of Puppets’ dancing in the dark party; however, his approach to pregaming is generally more relaxed than that of his teammates. “I try to tone it all down. A lot of people get all hyped up; they try to get as crazy as they can, but I just focus on what I have to do in the game” he said.

Regardless, the team shares the same objective in pregaming, which is to prepare mentally and physically for victory. The boys locker room which has been regarded as a “sweaty dungeon” or “dank man cave” really is much more. It’s a place for football players to apply various methods of achieving their common objective: winning.

The team ended their season with a record of 2-7 and won this year’s landmark homecoming game against West Lutheran High School.