Seattle is having a sports moment. The Seahawks took home their second Super Bowl victory;the Mariners won the division and made the American League Championship for the first time in over two decades. In the 2025 Leagues Cup, the Sounders defeated Inter Miami, and the Seattle Torrent were added to the PWHL. The most recent announcement of Seattle sports changes is the Seattle SuperSonics’ likely return after being moved to Oklahoma City in 2008. With the rising performance of local sports, people, especially college students moving to the city for the first time, are excited to be part of the fandom.
Kayla Okonu, a fourth-year design major, grew up in the Midwest going to Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins games. Baseball, in her opinion, was a bit boring. That all changed her first year when she attended a Mariners playoff watch party in 2022 at T-Mobile Park as part of a Seattle University scholarship program. The team was deep into a historic run as it played against the Toronto Blue Jays. The stadium was packed, the energy was overwhelming and the crowd started putting their shoes on their heads.
“Garlic fries were flying,” Okonu said. “We were all just sitting in a row so stressed out.”
The stadium erupted in the fifteenth inning after the Mariners won 10-9 against the Blue Jays. Since then, Okonu has become a fan of the Mariners, going to almost every home game with the same scholarship group. The most recent season finished with a long playoff run that ended in a heartbreaking defeat. However, Okonu feels hopeful about the upcoming season despite the rocky start. She sees a young roster, fresh call-ups from the minors and the same underdog energy that initially drew her in.
“Maybe we’re just setting up an underdog plot again,” Okonu said. “And that’s fine with me.”
Marcus Thompson, a second-year kinesiology major at the University of Washington, had no special interest in sports when he moved to Seattle. It wasn’t a player or a team that made him change his opinion; rather, it was a Sunday afternoon spent in a downtown restaurant and bar with strangers who all cared deeply about the same thing.
“Everywhere you go, people are talking about the Seahawks,” Thompson said. “Sundays feel different here, like the whole city is watching the same thing.”
He began to tune in out of curiosity, soon finding himself cheering alongside people he had never met. Although Thompson is aware that people may refer to him as a bandwagon fan, the term doesn’t upset him.
“I don’t think it matters how you start,” Thompson said. “If you end up caring, you end up caring. That’s real either way.”
Not everyone has come to Seattle sports recently. Chrystal Santiago, a first-year social welfare major, has been a Seahawks fan her entire life. After the Super Bowl win, she welcomes the new fans.
“The OG fans know who they are,” Santiago said. “I don’t have any issues with it.”
What kept her loyal through the harder years was community, the traditions and identity built around being a “12.” For Santiago, that foundation does not feel threatened by bandwagon talk. It just feels bigger now.
The SuperSonics, Seattle’s former NBA team, left the city in 2008, but talks of a return have already generated excitement and significant buzz. According to Okonu, she hears people discussing it all the time, which adds to her connection with the city.
“It makes me excited for the future of Seattle,” Okonu said. “It makes me want to stick around.”
The NBA Board of Governors approved official expansion discussions with Seattle and Las Vegas as target destinations March 25 of this year, with the 2028–29 season as the earliest possible return date. It’s a question of when, not if, according to league officials, and the SuperSonics name will stay with the team when they return.
The bottom line is the same: regardless of how Seattleites become fans of their local teams, they are connecting with their city. The energy of the city, the crowded bars on Sundays and the strangers who, by the last whistle, feel like friends has the power to turn casual viewers into true fans.
