BY ERIK FLYNN
“It’s survival of the fittest. I guess people just put their hearts on the line. It’s more than just a game,” senior Kaleb Iles states.
The basketball team? Nope. The students who cheer for them: the Blue Wave, a team of it’s own.
The graduation of former front row-ers Davis Mendenhall, Quinn Budig, Alex Utt, and Chase Beach has led to a changing of the guard, ushering in a new set of student section leaders.
Senior Jimmy Beach, one of the new student section leaders, believes that despite the loss of the greats such as Davis “Flocka Bird” Mendenhall, a corp of Joe Rolander, Kaleb Iles, Nick Jones and others will make it a strong showing for the fan section.
“Rolander is very creative and quick with his delivery, and I think we all know Iles will speak his mind whenever, and Jones is always looking to get weird.”
This season, the Mariemont student section of the basketball games tasked themselves with being the loudest, the most creative, and most organized fan section to ever fill the stands of the gymnasium.
“We’re going to have more varieties of cheers than last year. Once we get the whole section involved we will be louder than last year. It can be the best section ever,” says Iles. A new communication system of writing a coded number on a whiteboard was used in the season premier, held aloft by the students in the front row.
To accomplish these tasks, Athletic Director Tom Nerl has put forward several guidelines for the front row commandos: no singling out of players, coaches, or officials.
“If the leaders in the front row can’t control or lead or follow my requests they’ll be asked to leave. If the guys who replace them can’t handle that, they’ll be asked to leave,” says Nerl.
Despite his firm warning, Nerl gave a positive review of the student section’s conduct in the season opener, and has been an active planner in the section’s activities and cheers.
“I want there to be a core of four or five cheers that we can go back to. I want them to be organized in the cheers, not just yelling out random things,” says Nerl.
Whether the Blue Wave and Mr. Nerl will clash is anyone’s guess, but both sides are united in elimination of the perennial stigma of (what has come to be known as) the unenthusiastic freshman.
“There’s nothing worse than freshman who don’t cheer,” warns Iles. “If you’re not going to get loud, the Blue Wave isn’t for you.”