Every year from late November to March, loyal fans of high school basketball pack gyms nationwide to cheer their favorite teams on to victory.

In some of the country’s smaller towns, Friday night or Saturday afternoon the place to be, the place where members of the community congregate, is at the high school gym watching hometown teams battle opponents.

When I was a sports editor in Eastern Oregon before I came to Whidbey Island, Friday nights at the gym in Monument were experiences never to be forgotten.

Fewer than 200 people reside in the town of Monument and the high school has so few students, they combine with Dayville for volleyball and basketball.

The school building itself strongly resembles Oak Harbor Elementary School in design and has one of those old-fashioned gyms with permanent wood bleachers and a stage at one end of the floor.

The place is always filled to capacity when the Tigers are playing at home, the crowd is loud and boisterous, and the band consists of one guy who can play the heck out of the trombone.

The town of Unity, located in the middle of nowhere in southern Baker County, has a population of less than 150 and there were times when nearly every person in town was at a Saturday afternoon game at Burnt River High School to watch the Bulls in action.

Understand that the the Tigers and the Bulls were not always great basketball teams year in and year out and sometimes they had terrible records, but the community still came to games in droves.

Last Friday night at Coupeville High School, watching the Wolves take on Sultan, was a true nostalgia trip for the kid.

Fans of the red, black and white were out in force, so was the band and the cheerleaders and I think this had a lot to do with the Wolf Pack boys taking the game over in the final minutes to pull out a come-from-behind victory.

Both the Coupeville girls and boys teams had losing records coming into the games, but loyal fans were still there.

My question to Wildcat basketball fans is, where are you?

Coach Brett McLeod’s girls have a solid team with a winning record, but turnout for home games is sparse at best.

Last week’s game was a little better fan-wise, but this was mostly due to the band being in attendance.

The team that really needs fan support is the Wildcat boys.

Coach Mike Washington’s team plays its heart out, but simply can’t seem to break into the WesCo North win column.

As a result, fan attendance is dismal. Shoot, there were more fans at Wednesday’s Oak Harbor wrestling match watching Wildcat grapplers battle Snohomish.

People, it’s time to sack “the they’re not going to win so I’m staying home” attitude and start coming to games. If for no reason more than the team is composed of our hometown kids and they deserve the support.

Let me end this column with something a little more positive.

Here’s a good idea for booster clubs to make money and help finance athletic programs.

Sure the Papa Murphy’s Pizza Shootout at Oak Harbor home basketball games is a good idea, but why not have a cake raffle?

Monument and Burt River always made a ton of money with their cake raffles.

How it goes is tickets are 25 cents apiece or five for a dollar, which could probably be upped these days to 50 cents each or three for a dollar.

Then you have a dozen or more kids of all ages with homemade cakes, pies, cookies and other assorted goodies they’ve created standing on the court at halftime while the winning tickets are drawn. Fans are then allowed to select whatever item they want if their ticket number is called. Naturally if your ticket is one of the first drawn, you have a better selection of stuff to choose from.

Yummy and a good way to increase fan attendance. Who knows, you might go home with a cake.