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Battle of the Fans: Blue Crew Legacy

February 18, 2012

PETOSKEY -- Directly across the gym from the Petoskey student cheering section Friday, a toddler played on the first row of bleachers.

He wasn’t paying much attention to the Northmen’s boys basketball game against West Branch Ogemaw Heights. But he was wearing a blue T-shirt that read “Future Blue Crew” -- guaranteeing he will be soon enough. 

At Petoskey High, a Class A school in a town where families have lived for generations, kids grow up aspiring not just to be the athletes playing for championships -- but also the Blue Crew members cheering them on.

While the other cheering section finalists in this season’s MHSAA “Battle of the Fans” contest were officially organized, for the most part, over the last year or two, Petoskey’s Blue Crew is nearing a decade as a constant at its school’s athletic events -- and a source of community pride. 

“It’s such a legacy. Eighth grade, you’re looking forward to to being even involved in the Blue Crew, ... and now that we’re all seniors, everyone is listening to us, and we just want our teams to do well,” Petoskey senior Hayley Fettig said. “That’s a big part of it. We’re here to support our teams and cheer for our teams, and be a team ourselves.”

Petoskey was the fifth and final stop on the Battle of the Fans tour to find Michigan’s top student cheering section. Over the last five weeks, MHSAA staff and members of its Student Advisory Council also visited Frankenmuth, Reese, Grand Rapids Christian and Rockford. MHSAA-produced videos of all five finalists have been posted on the MHSAAsports YouTube page. Online voting will take place Monday-Thursday on the MHSAA Facebook page (you must “like” our page to vote). The winner will be announced Friday.

 

For most of its basketball history, Petoskey played in its old Central Gymnasium, an arena straight from the movie “Hoosiers” which seats about 1,500 fans and turned into a giant tunnel of cheers and shouts for every home game. But late in the fall of 2002, the newly-built high school opened a much larger gym that not only holds more fans, but also is more cavernous.

 

A bigger room meant a need for bigger spirit. And that sparked the Blue Crew, the brain child of members of the student council, some of whose names are still thrown around the halls to this day -- although the current seniors were in elementary school when it all began. 

About 140 students piled into a “whited out” Blue Crew on Friday, plus 60 more in the jazz band that plays every home game and easily could be confused for one at the college level. To the left of the Crew sat about 50 more students not yet in high school. All sub-high school students are known as “Future Blue Crew,” while teachers are “Old-School Blue Crew.” 

The Blue Crew often stands larger than it did Friday -- but on this night, the junior varsity and freshman basketball teams were playing simultaneously at other sites, and the hockey team was on the road. Petoskey’s Big North Conference foes are spread throughout the northern third of the Lower Peninsula, but the Blue Crew is known for making hours-long trips and constant support. 

Members of the student council still play a big part. Those 12 students, plus 10 more take a one-hour leadership class taught by former girls varsity coach Matt Tamm. His classroom is a hall of memories itself, with photos of teams going back decades. Taking up center spot on a main wall is the original Blue Crew banner including its mission and three directives for generations to come.

“When I was younger, the older kids always told us, ‘You have to watch how we do this so when you’re older, you can do it how we did it,’ senior Brad Berkau said.

“You begin to learn when you’re younger what we do and how to go about cheering the right away. Not just boasting about our team, but not putting down the other ones too,” senior Nick Godfrey added.  

That “right way” includes refusing to cheer negatively. Petoskey athletic director Gary Hice said it’s been four or five years since he’s had to tell the Crew that one of its cheers was crossing the line. Counselor Karen Starkey, who helps by coordinating parents to cheer with the students, said she hasn’t seen the Blue Crew respond to an opposing cheering section’s negative chant in at least two years.

Instead, the Crew pours its energy into more memorable ventures.

Starkey was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2011, and her first chemotherapy treatment was on a game night. 

She showed up in white, anticipating a white out. Instead, she found the entire Blue Crew in pink -- before receiving a group hug from the 200 or so students there supporting her as well. 

“Those are the things these guys just jump out and do,” Starkey said. “It’s so not necessary, but it was just so cool.”

PHOTOS courtesy of Larry Tracy and CMA Action Photography.

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.)