With Center Grove just seconds away from victory in the championship game of the Johnson County girls basketball tournament, the students cheering for Franklin were making every effort to keep their spirits high in defeat.
Turning their attention to the Center Grove students cheering at the other end — several of whom were members of the Trojans’ football team, which had routed Ben Davis in a Class 6A semistate game the night before — the Grizzly Cub faithful started up a chant:
“Let’s play football! Let’s play football!”
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]
Click here to purchase photos from this galleryThe Center Grove side couldn’t help but laugh.
Such back and forth is a common occurrence anytime county rivals face off, especially during football and boys basketball games. Not content to just win the battles on the field or the court, students work hard to outdo one another in the bleachers as well.
“We believe that we’re a better student section than anybody in our conference or county or anything, so we always try to prove it,” said Greenwood senior Damon Maynard, who plays football for the Woodmen in the fall but is one of the ringleaders of the student cheer block during the winter.
<p style="text-align: left"><strong>The bunch in the front</strong></p>
At most high schools, you’ll find some sort of hierarchy within the student cheering section. Freshmen are relegated to the back rows, while seniors get the prime seats at courtside.Which seniors steer the ship, however, is decided in different ways.
At Franklin, the senior leaders choose their successors on the last day of school, passing on a megaphone in a symbolic gesture. Zack Agard and A.J. Rice were selected to run the show this year.
Meanwhile, at Center Grove, Josh Hall sort of fell into the leadership role this year during the first game of football season.
“I used to play football; I have a lot of buddies on the football team,” Hall explained. “So I guess I was just the loudest one there, and I was just getting super excited, so I just kind of stepped in place and starting chants and getting everyone hyped up. And ever since then, I’ve just kind of led chants and led the student section.”
Hall does get plenty of help in that department — he says roughly a dozen of his classmates are involved in the cheer block leadership, organizing chants and selecting themes for each game.
That group grew considerably after football season, when several members of that team joined the fray.
“Having those guys is actually a lot better,” Hall said, “because most of the football guys are pretty loud, so that definitely makes the student section better.”
At Greenwood, the leadership changes with the seasons. During football season, Adam Rapp and Matt Lekse were organizing the cheer block for the Woodmen. But in the winter, with those two occupied by basketball and wrestling, respectively, Maynard and classmate Nick Chesser have grabbed the torch.
All four remain in the discussion to some extent, though, no matter the season. Chesser says that during the summer, the group came up with a two-page list of possible themes. Leading into basketball games, he and Maynard will text each other to see which theme is best, then post in on the fan section student page.
Wearing the school colors each game is old school. During some games, cheer blocks wear all white, or all black. American flag wear or Santa hats are options too. Usually, a small group of seniors make the call.
At Whiteland, the process is a bit more open. Senior Jacob Fendley said the leaders will narrow the list to a handful of choices and then put the matter up for a vote on the group’s Twitter page.
“We’ll usually narrow it down to like three or four,” Fendley said, “and then a day or two before the game we’ll say, ‘Hey guys, what do you think about the game this week? What do you guys want to vote for?’ “
At Center Grove, Hall says, the student government came out with a list of themes, but the cheer block leaders opted to overrule them on a few.
“Some of them we just didn’t like, so we changed them up,” he said. “Ultimately, we kind of wanted to dictate that for ourselves, because not everyone in student government’s a senior.”
Of course, the administration has the last word at every school. Nothing gets done without an OK from an athletic director or principal.
“Some of them we thought were good got shut down,” Rice said.
<p style="text-align: left"><strong>Wild and crazy guys (and girls)</strong></p>
Many of the chants used by student cheer blocks have been staples for years — a “You can’t do that!” after a foul or a traveling call, for example — but every year, students try to add new wrinkles.At Franklin, this year saw the unveiling of the Curtain of Distraction — a framed curtain placed behind the basket. When opposing players shoot free throws, the curtain opens to reveal different gags, such as a student in a gorilla suit.
The curtain, built in manufacturing class, was based off of something that had been done at the collegiate level by Arizona State fans, Agard said.
Center Grove also briefly experimented with a curtain this winter after seeing its county rival pull it off, but the Trojan version didn’t last long.
“We let the underclassmen do that one, and it didn’t really work out,” Center Grove senior Alec Yates said. “Franklin does theirs a lot better.”
Instead, the Trojan faithful put their energy into something new — guys wearing uncomfortably short cutoff jean shorts.
It’s not the most flattering look, particularly on offensive linemen, but it seems to add to the spirit of the group.
“We always say the rowdiest we’ll ever be is when we’re in jorts,” Hall said.
<p style="text-align: left"><strong>Watch the throne</strong></p>
Every student section strives to be the best — but Franklin has the strongest claim to the title after winning the WISH-TV Zone 8 banner as the best student section in central Indiana.The Grizzly Cubs beat out Cathedral for the honor in November, thanks in part to a Mannequin Challenge video that was posted on the group’s Twitter page.
“That Mannequin Challenge was just unbelievable,” WISH-TV sports director Anthony Calhoun said. “They were just creative. We loved how creative they were, and we loved their passion for their school more than anything. And then also their commitment to high school football, and that really is what put them over the top.”
Of course, that only made other Johnson County cheer blocks more eager to take shots at the champs.
“They were pretty quiet when we played them in football and shut them out twice,” Whiteland’s Fendley said. (In fairness, only one of the Warriors’ wins over Franklin was a shutout; the score in the first meeting was 51-21.)
“We make the joke sometimes that all Franklin has is the best student section, because they don’t have many good sports,” Center Grove’s Hall said.
“(But) they always have an awesome student section.”
The trash talk between schools takes on many forms. Besides the chants back and forth, student leaders have been known to jot down messages to their rivals on the dry-erase boards normally used to relay cheer instructions to students in the rear of the section.
And, of course, today’s students also take to social media to throw verbal jabs.
“Oh yeah. Twitter beef all the time,” Yates said.
As intense as the rivalries can get, the talk is almost always in fun, and there’s a healthy respect between schools no matter how competitive things get.
When some Franklin students vandalized the large rock by Whiteland’s football field, Agard and Rice volunteered to help clean up the mess. (The Whiteland custodial staff ended up taking care of it first.)
“We wanted to make it right,” Rice said. “We didn’t think that stuff was necessary.”
Besides, as Hall noted, it’s a lot more fun when the opponent has a rowdy group of its own — the rising tide of noise tends to lift all boats.
“I’d rather have someone on the other end yelling back at us,” he said, “because it motivates everyone else — ‘Oh, let’s get louder!’ And that ultimately helps the morale of the team.”
Which is kind of the point in the first place.
“Our basketball players love it too, because we talk to them all the time and they like the hype and the excitement,” Maynard said. “It kind of gets everybody ready for the game beforehand.”
“We’re trying to get everybody involved as much as we can,” Rice added, “because we want everybody’s experience to be the best. We want everybody to have some fun, because that’s what he and I think it’s all about — just going out and having fun.
“You’re only in high school once.”
