“You have to understand, most of these girls have never been to a Pep-Rally before…”
Last week I was invited to attend the VCUQ girls basketball game. They are doing really well this year so I decided to check it out:
But lets take a step back first. I was in studio late one night and a few of the girls who were still there as well decided to take a big break and head to the game. Now, as many of you know, I’m not a big sports nut. So the idea of going to a pep-rally and getting my face painted, then headed to the game, isn’t really something I do… But after hours and hours of work, I was about ready to call it quits. Someone passed by my studio room and told me that there was food at the pep-rally, and I was packed up and out the door within moments. We made out way down to atrium expecting to find hoards and hoards of people cheering and yelling “GO RAMS” but when we got there, I was shocked. There was no cheer squad, no mascot no band, just about 20 people walking around in over-sized VCU t-shirts with yellow and black face-paint.
Our bewildered look must have caught some attention because one of the ladies working the face painting turned to us and said “You have to understand, most of these girls have never been to a Pep-Rally before…”. Instantly, it made sense. Brent and I got some Black and Gold war paint and donned oversize shirts and joined the ranks of about 30 students.
Now this must have been really odd, because when we got there to show out spirit, there was practically no one there. There was no other cheer squad, and actually only a few parents showed up to cheer on the other team. Our spirit over took that small gym.
Now this was no ordinary cheering. It was a mixture of chants, waves, and traditional Egyptian drumming. It was completely different than anything I have ever been to.
After a while, the other team started to get into it, and one man (who I assume was a father of a player, or else he was REALLY weird…) started cheering back at us! We called him… “Crazy-Claws”
The other team was the Wildcats, so instead of giant foam fingers, they had giant foam claws. Crazy-claws insisted on waving them at us menacingly each time his team scored. Frightful.
Well, we ended up loosing the game but not the spirit. After the end of the game we still rushed the court to congratulate our team and cheered “V-C-U!” as we did.
In the spirit of sportsmanship, the Wildcats got together and cheered “VCU!” as well. Unfortunately it was lost amongst our own chatter and we ended up responding with a “VCU!” cheer of our own. Oh well, they had the win, we can have the cheers.
