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TC West 'Creatures' of Cheer Habit

February 11, 2014

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

TRAVERSE CITY – The “Bleacher Creatures” stood only 250 strong for Friday’s Traverse City West boys basketball game against Petoskey. 

A hockey game in Trenton took those 25 players out of the cheering section, with 50 more performing a play and 25 playing a jazz concert. Still, by Friday’s fourth quarter, at least a few from those other events trickled into the gym to finish the night with their green-clad classmates. 

No one expects someone to skip another school activity to join the Creatures. Those who have to work on game nights are exempt, and having a lot of homework also is excusable. 

Otherwise, showing up, like most of the student section’s rules, simply is part of an unwritten code – like going to class or eating lunch. It goes along with being a part of Traverse City West, the fourth stop on this season’s MHSAA Battle of the Fans tour.  

“People don’t think of it as we have a better student section than other people; oh, our student section is the best of the best, the loudest, this and this and this,” West senior Brian Jean said. “Really, I just think it’s a way of life around here. We just ... go. That’s just what we do.” 

Traverse City West was the second-to-last stop on this year’s Battle of the Fans III tour. MHSAA staff and Student Advisory Council members will finish at Beaverton on Friday and already have visited Buchanan, Bridgman and Frankfort. Public voting on the MHSAA’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites will take place Feb. 18-20, with the Student Advisory Council taking that vote into consideration when selecting the champion.

The winner will be announced on Second Half on Feb. 21 and honored with a championship banner during the Boys Basketball Semifinals on March 21 at Michigan State University’s Breslin Center.

Traverse City West is by far the largest of this year’s BOTF finalists. But it also has one of the most established student section traditions of any finalist during the contest’s three-year run – and it’s a history current leaders proudly recall with detail. 

The school, born in 1997 when the former Traverse City High split into West and Central, is young by relative standards. A student body of just more than 1,600 students is represented in part by a 45-member student senate, which among other duties organizes the Bleacher Creatures, publicizes game nights and generally works to build school spirit. 

Current senior leaders were in fourth grade in 2006. But they are able to rattle off that the section in its official form with its Bucket Brigade leaders was started by a student named Chase O’Black, who actually has a “titan spirit scholarship” named after him that is available to one Traverse City West boy and girl each spring. 

“In middle school you used to walk around the football field with your friends,” senior Kelsey Boudjalis said, “and you always saw the high schoolers and said, ‘I can’t wait to be like that.’”

The student senate provides the Bleacher Creatures an official mechanism made up of athletes from a number of sports plus others who participate in theater, Model United Nations and a host of other non-sports activities. With input from such a variety of social groups, the section represents a “melting pot” of the school on a larger scale, senior Charlie Clark said. 

Start with the Bucket Brigade. Although not officially designated by the student senate as the leaders, the four seniors who dress in paint suits and bang plastic 5-gallon buckets (but only at outdoor events) are the unwritten ring masters of the Creatures, with Brigade responsibilities handed down year by year. This year’s brigade is comprised of four senate members including school governor Brady Severt. 

If the Brigade gets things rolling, tradition drives the rest. Doors for football games open at 5:30 p.m., and Creatures are waiting. The section can swell to nearly 1,000 students for Homecoming or a big game against rival Traverse City Central, but like at many schools it’s an another unspoken rule that students start at the top as freshmen and gradually move forward to the front (unless they have older friends to hang with or a sweet bunny suit like Severt wore a few times as an underclassmen). 

Of course, the Creatures have themes: Green Screen in West’s version of a White Out, although the Creatures like White Outs as well and combine them with Toga Nights. Wild, Wild West is a Homecoming tradition going back nearly to the start, and a neat latest addition is the Patriot Game – during which West wears red or blue and rival Traverse City Central wears the opposite, and together they raise money for area veterans organizations. 

There’s music too: The band jams an adjacent section during football games, with a drum line filling the breaks for indoor events. And the Creatures love fan buses, drumming up enough interest to set up two for soccer and one for a football game this fall, plus another for the West/Central hockey game Dec. 18 at Comerica Park in Detroit. 

Getting word out to more than 1,600 students is a little different than for the other BOTF contenders half and a quarter of West’s size, for obvious reasons. But the senate incorporates a few strategies in addition to the usual social media blasts and school announcements:

  • Signage: Banners hang from the second-floor balcony overlooking the school cafeteria (see video for visual) announcing what’s coming up. 
  • Word of mouth: Leaders visit the cafeteria during lunch hours, making sure to hit up tables of students they don’t recognize among section regulars in an effort to get everyone from every group involved.

Keeping 300-400 students doing the same cheers is another task of some doing given the size of the group. But because the Creatures use a mix of new and old, there’s uniformity regardless of which leaders are leading crews at games that often are being played simultaneously. The cheers always are the same, allowing everyone the opportunity to participate and athletes on every team – even bowling teams – to enjoy the support. 

“It gives the team something to play for instead of just the school. When they’re looking into the stands and seeing the entire student body there, it’s like, ‘Wow, everyone really cares about the outcome of this game,’” Clark said. 

“As an athlete,” senior Hunter Lumsden added,” playing in front of a big student section makes you want to play a lot harder.” 

The one debatable point is how the section became the Bleacher Creatures. Does it go back to a zombie theme night? Was it in response to Central having its Superfans? “It goes too far back for the books,” Severt quipped. 

But tradition doesn’t graduate. Jean said past Bucket Brigaders he followed at a distance as an underclassmen approached him while home from college this fall to shake his hand and impart congrats and encouragement. 

There’s pride in seeing the section continuing in the “right direction,” Clark said. And that right direction means being known as the best in the northern Lower Peninsula. 

“I feel like the student section is a big family. The part of the high school seniors before us was to show us how to (cheer),” Jean said. “Now we’re showing the younger generation, if you will, how it’s done.” 

“When I look back at high school, it’s definitely going to be one of the things I’ll remember,” Boudjalis added. “I want other kids to feel that way too.”

Battle of the Fans III is sponsored in part by the United Dairy Industry of Michigan. 

PHOTOS: (Top) Traverse City West fans cheer on the boys basketball team during Friday's game against Petoskey. (Middle) "Bleacher Creatures," led by two "Bucket Brigade" members at the lower left corner, fall backward on a "punch-out" to celebrate a 3-pointer. (Photos courtesy of Rick Sack/TC Rick Photo.)

5 Ways the Blue Crew Has Us 'Believin'

February 3, 2017

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

PETOSKEY – What once was one of the most raucous gyms in the northern Lower Peninsula had grown hushed as one of Michigan’s proudest student sections slowly fell away.  

Hopefully Petoskey’s opponents didn’t get used to the silence.

The Blue Crew, a finalist for the inaugural Battle of the Fans in 2012, is back after all but disappearing the last few years – and hosted the latest BOTF tour stop Wednesday for its boys basketball game against Sault Ste. Marie.

The breakdown: The Blue Crew is rooted in generations of support going back to the school’s old Central Gymnasium, an arena straight out of “Hoosiers” where 1,500 fans for years packed to the rafters in support of their teams. A new school and a new gym became home to the Northmen in 2002, and that move served as the catalyst for creation of the “Blue Crew” by the school’s student council. The section thrived for more than a decade, but over the last few years for a few reasons discussed below, dwindled. But it’s been rebuilt – leaders have even pulled out of retirement advisor Karen Starkey, wife of longtime boys hoops coach Dennis and a former counselor at the school – and that well-known energy has returned to fuel the next generation of Petoskey athletes.

We met with seniors Ashlyn Kartes, Stuart Green and Emme Williams and juniors Danny Kolp, Isabella Rowe and Jake Lee during a night dedicated to raising cancer awareness. See below for our video and five reasons the Blue Crew is rising again.

1. What’s old is new again.

When we visited with the Blue Crew in 2012 during the first Battle of the Fans finalists tour, we learned about a student section steeped in history. But over the last few years, the section more or less disappeared. As this year’s leaders tell it, the Crew was completely broken-down last winter, with a lack of leadership and a mood that discouraged participation because seniors did what they wanted and expected everyone else to fill in behind them. Football games this fall were similarly tepid. But everything changed after most of the section’s new leadership attended an MHSAA Sportsmanship Summit on Nov. 9 in Traverse City, where they loaded up on energy and ideas. On the car ride home, they created a new Blue Crew Twitter page and had a number of followers before they even arrived back at their school. The revival was on. Volleyball games started taking off, and hockey and basketball have been big draws this winter. Petoskey girls and boys basketball teams at all three levels had games across three gyms Wednesday – the main gym, auxiliary and the gym at the old school – but it was obvious students were trickling into the section after their games. Nearly 200 showed for a midweek game, even as the junior varsity girls were playing at the same time as the varsity boys. It's a lesson for hundreds of schools across our state: you too can grow a student section, and all it takes is a group of motivated leaders to get it started. 

2. They’re one big family.

Whereas by the end of last year seniors ruled and few others cared to be a part, the attitude in the Blue Crew is much more inclusive this winter. Leaders during our trip emphasized multiple times how much they adore their underclassmen, who might make up a majority of the section – there are likely more freshmen than seniors most nights. It’s changed the mood in the school’s hallways as well. Meanwhile, those younger students are showing excitement about continuing to grow the section in the future, while this year’s seniors are excited they’ve been able to restart a legacy and leave something behind. Gone are rules about seniors in front – an informal group of guys who attend most games take some of those spots because they lead cheers, but whoever shows up first gets the best seats. “We kinda went back and forth on this because we have seniors in our Blue Crew and in our leadership, and of course you’ve waited the four years (to be up front). The people before us were really into the seniors in the front row, so we were raised with that. But once we sat back on it, the people that get there early are the ones who are going to cheer the loudest, and they want to be there. The underclassmen who get there an hour early before game time are the ones who are going to cheer the loudest, and that’s what we want.”

3. They’re in the game. 

The Blue Crew is a student section in the most traditional sense. While there were a few bells and whistles during our trip – the rollercoaster, a traditional “Don’t Stop Believing” performance arm-in-arm – this is a section that is most focused (and rightly so) on the game being played. The chants started from the first basket (see moment in video with streamers thrown into the air) and didn’t stop until the game’s end. Cheers may have started up front, but the section as a whole was engaged – which made the Crew stick out for more than just the pink shirts they were wearing.

4. This section doesn’t just cheer for the boys.

Again, there were games at all three levels going on all over Petoskey on Wednesday. But 40 students filled the Crew at the start of the 5:30 p.m. girls varsity game, and that continued to grow steadily as the other games were completed and players and fans moved on to the main events of the night. This is all by design; as the leaders went about rebuilding the section, they came up with 20 theme nights so they had one for every home varsity game for both the boys and girls. They also made sure to spread what were expected to be the most popular to both boys and girls games to guarantee maximum support for both teams. What’s more, the varsity players cheer for each other. Kolp and Lee start on the boys team – Kolp, in fact, is considered one of the top players in the northern Lower Peninsula – and they are sure-thing regulars at the girls games, Lee often dressed as Gandalf from “Lord of the Rings” and the 6-foot-9 Kolp as the section’s tallest cheerleader rooting on his sister Megan and her teammates.

5. They’ve mixed the old and the new

As noted, the ode to the band Journey has survived the rise, fall and rise again of the Blue Crew, and the section lives in the same far corner of the gym and continues to receive the wise counsel of Starkey. But the new has been important too. Just about every student section has theme nights, but Petoskey’s leaders worked hard to do something just a little different to make each unique – Frat/Sorority Night included giant Greek letters for “PHS” and Wacky/Tacky Tuesday was a new spin on bad fashion. They’re also taking advantage of social media, using Twitter to connect with classmates across a school with nearly 1,000 students – for example, a freshman DM’d to suggest a toga night idea that made the final list, and a Twitter poll was used to pick from four possible slogans for Wednesday’s pink shirts. The school also brought back a cheerleading team this fall after 12 years without one, and the Blue Crew hopes to work with that team as support continues to build.

In their words

New and improved: “The atmosphere is totally different (from last year),” Green said. “People didn’t really want to cheer. Maybe they wanted to but they felt like it was out of their element – where now, there’s an atmosphere that you show up, you cheer as ridiculous as you want, and it’s accepted.”

We watched; we joined: “A lot of other student sections in our conference are good. We’ve been surrounded by that. So after going to the (Sportsmanship Summit), we knew we could do that,” Kartes said. Recalling watching last season’s BOTF champion Traverse City West at a 2016 District Final, Williams added: “Just seeing that, we all just realized playing in front of our Blue Crew is not easy. And that’s what our goal is.”

All are welcome: “(Wednesday) we went around to the lunchrooms and passed around candy, and we were like, ‘Hey, come to the game. Bring your friends,'" Williams said. “Once everyone is in the student section, even if you don’t know the person, it’s like you’ve known them for so long. It’s like one big family there, and I think that’s what makes us so special.”

Next stop on BOTF: We'll finish the 2017 BOTF tour at Frankenmuth for tonight's boys basketball game against Millington. Click for coverage of our visits to Boyne City on Jan. 13, Traverse City West on Jan. 20 and Charlotte on Jan. 28.

The Battle of the Fans is sponsored in part by the United Dairy Industry of Michigan.

PHOTOS: (Top) Petoskey's Blue Crew roots on its boys basketball team Wednesday against Sault Ste. Marie. (Middle) Blue Crew members huddle in the middle of the section, creating a sea of pink streamers. (Photos by Larry Tracy/ CMA Action Photography.)