At Oswego High School, the football themes, school spirit, and game hype all come from the energetic student section- Orange Crew. Orange Crew works together to encourage the high school sport programs and promote school spirit around Oswego.
The Orange Crew leaders went into this year looking for a change in the student section. They wanted to involve everyone more and create a positive environment at each sports event.
One of the Orange Crew senior leaders, Tyler Stack, spoke on the reasoning behind having such an involving student section.
“It is important to show respect to all those athletes in any sport that put in all their time and dedication. Hours and hours of hard work, and we just want to show them that people appreciate what they’re doing and want to be there for them,” Stack said.
Orange Crew leaders spoke about the recent uprising in new student section ideas, including new football themes, more chants, being louder as a group, and going to more sporting events.
“It’s important to have the input from the hundreds of students we have because, you know, it’s their time, we want to make it fun,” Stack said.
Stack emphasized more on the conflicts of running an entire student section, such as trying to please every student at every game.
“Every week we prepare, and we take in everyone’s suggestions and run it through the leaders to make sure that we feel comfortable with making a change. As long as they’re patient with us, we love the feedback,” Stack said.
He continued to talk about where in the student section they could make it better.
“We can’t always please everyone and that’s some things with either theme changes, certain music being played, or chants, we have to take into consideration that not everyone’s opinion can be fulfilled but we do try to dictate every single part that we can.”
Jack Hawkins, another senior Orange Crew leader, spoke on his motive to improve the student section. They added their own post after the first game about potential improvements to the Orange Crew Instagram page.
“The next day [@ohsorangecrewthoughts] was brought onto instagram. I don’t look at that account all the time, personally, but I hear things we could do and we will take them into consideration,” Hawkins said.
Stack added onto Hawkins about the importance of students’ feedback and how they wanted to make it different from previous years.
“I think it’s important that they didn’t really give many people a voice last year, so maybe that’s why we are seeing some negative feedback,” said Stack.
On the other hand, not all of the feedback the Orange Crew has received has been negative.
“We got comments about adding music and how they like that, and they also like the recent addition of rally towels.” Hawkins said.
Orange Crew is excited to continue growing as the sport seasons progress. They will cheer on the Oswego Panthers at the next home football game, which will be held on October 7th at 7 p.m. at Ken Pickerill Stadium.
Great article! I hope OC can continue to show respect, high energy, and support at our games.