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'Stang Nation' Continues Tradition of Support
February 10, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
MUNISING – Some of Izzy Nebel’s fondest memories took root during junior high, while watching Munising games, hearing the older kids yell and feeling a little overwhelmed by the booming of their voices.
Now?
“Everyone that I stand around, we just look at each other and scream. We’re so excited,” Nebel said. “It’s just so fun. That’s all I can really say about it.”
But they’re actually saying a lot more.
Nebel and her classmates in “Stang Nation” – one of five finalists for this year’s MHSAA Battle of the Fans recognizing the state’s top high school student cheering section – are carrying on a tradition of support going back generations and stretching far outside her small town’s border.
The Class D school, on the shore of Lake Superior overlooking the Pictured Rocks, is home to only 200 high schoolers. But it’s the center of pride for their community, and as the first BOTF finalist from the Upper Peninsula, something of an ambassador as well.
Munising was the fourth stop on this year’s BOTF finalists tour, which also has included visits to Yale, Muskegon Western Michigan Christian and Traverse City West and will finish with a trip to Charlotte on Friday. The public may vote for its favorite on the MHSAA’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites beginning Feb. 16, with the MHSAA Student Advisory Council taking that vote into consideration when selecting the champion – which will be named Feb. 19 on Second Half.
This was Stang Nation’s second time applying for Battle of the Fans. The idea was sparked by annual trips downstate for the MHSAA Boys Basketball Finals – 10 families make the annual trek together – and watching Battle of the Fans videos shown on the Breslin Center scoreboard before tip-offs and during breaks in play.
It was nurtured during the fall of 2014, when Munising’s football team made the MHSAA Finals for the first time since 1980 and traveled to Ford Field for the Division 8 championship game. Stang Nation took hold as the official name of the longtime section.
Enthusiasm was stoked again when leaders attended the MHSAA’s Sportsmanship Summit in November in Marquette. That led to the section having theme nights for the first time, and the love isn’t just reserved for the boys basketball team as in other communities – Stang Nation’s “Beach Night” was for a girls hoops game and groups of fans attended most home volleyball games and traveled some too, although many of Munising’s opponents are located an hour’s drive or farther away.
But the filling of a section of bleachers under a “Sixth Man” sign in the school’s gym is only part of the cozy homecourt advantage. The sports teams select “super fans” and players present them with T-shirts. Nebel’s uncle is among many of the recognizable faces from over the years, as he’s always in the crowd wearing a foam orange cowboy hat from the football championship game trip 35 years ago. “Those are the kind of people we have here,” she said.
And then, there are the parades.
Munising has had a nice run of success the last few years. In 2012, the boys basketball team won its first District title since 1957. The 2014 football run included a first District title since 1980 and three straight road games before the trip to Detroit. This fall, the girls tennis team won its first MHSAA Finals championship.
That basketball triumph led to a welcoming parade of police cars and fire engines when the team returned to town from Superior Central. And that’s become something of the norm for any win at the District level or higher. Parades through town welcomed the football team back from its playoff wins in 2014 and ended in the school’s gym, where fans gathered to continue celebrating. The girls tennis team got theirs, with a fan hitting tennis balls over the bus into the woods beyond as it drove by and families standing in their yards to welcome the newly-crowned champs.
But the support doesn’t stop there. When Munising’s football team returned from Ford Field two seasons ago, it stopped at the entrance to town – and only continued on once Ishpeming’s football team, which had won the Division 7 championship, joined it in the parade as well as the Hematites made their way back home.
“We’re really supportive of everyone around us,” junior Marissa Immel said. “This fall, our girls volleyball team lost at Regionals to (Crystal Falls) Forest Park. Some of our teammates made a sign for them and went to their Quarterfinal game, and after we gave them the sign to bring to the Finals. They were super appreciative of it.”
It’s an attitude that goes beyond sports. The school sponsored a fundraiser for cancer research at its football Homecoming and raised $4,200 – which would equate to roughly $21 per high school student. It’s not unusual that when someone in the community is struggling with a sickness or other hard times, the town and surrounding communities rally to help without a second thought. One of Nebel’s aunts lost her house in a fire three years ago and received an outpouring of assistance from Munising but also from as far away at Marquette.
Munising’s smaller student population allows for a little bit different student section setup than at larger schools, where a group of students usually take the reins. Whereas other BOTF finalists have had their leadership willed down or selected by administrators, Stang Nation unofficially follows leaders who have taken charge in other groups at the school – Nebel, Immel, junior Jared Immel (her cousin), junior Rachel Cooper and senior Ian McInnis all are in some combination of student council, National Honor Society and Key Club, and four play multiple sports.
Everyone knows everyone, and anyone is free to kick off a cheer or provide input. The building actually houses sixth, seventh and eighth graders as well, and the high school leaders work to get those younger students involved. Also, a peer-to-peer mentoring program connects high schoolers with elementary students, providing another avenue for inclusion and passing on the good word.
Nebel and her classmates are building plenty of memories in Stang Nation again, most of them including leaving games exhausted, barely able to speak, with sore feet from jumping around in the bleachers.
But they’ll also remember becoming the first Upper Peninsula school to represent in Battle of the Fans – and the opportunity to show the enthusiasm that has lived in Munising long before this winter while passing it on to younger fans above them in the stands.
“I hope we’ve opened people eyes to this, because it’s so fun to participate in,” Nebel said. “It’s just fun knowing that people are going to see what you’re putting into it. I hope other people see that and think, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a really cool idea,’ and they do it too. Because I want everyone to experience what we’re experiencing.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Munising fans cheer during Friday's boys basketball game against Eben Junction Superior Central. (Middle) Stang Nation fills a corner of bleachers at the school's gym. (Below) Students celebrate another Homecoming victory. (Photos by Kristen Elizabeth Photography.)
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Have you Herd? Buchanan Tradition Lives On
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
February 14, 2020
BUCHANAN – Every year cheering in Buchanan High School’s student section is different – a different mix of students guarantees a different leadership style, different ideas and different levels of creativity.
But let’s not confuse different with new. Buchanan has built one of the state’s richest student section traditions, and with the accolades to back it up – Battle of the Fans championships in 2013 and 2018 and four other finals finishes.
There’s no forgetting The Herd’s past. And why would anyone want to try?
Section leaders going back nearly a decade are recalled as famously as any recent star athlete. Current section leaders readily recall when they, as elementary students, learned Herd staple cheers like “Geronimo” from those past all-stars during visits – traveling pep rallies – to their elementary and middle schools.
Photos from years past adorn classroom walls, stoking memories and new ideas. And past Herd campaigns like “Mean Stinks” and “Don’t be a Bully” provide memories of growing up in a school and community that has become known as a standard-setter for student section support – and added to the legacy with another BOTF finalist tour visit Tuesday for its boys basketball game against Watervliet.
“We've been doing this for so long. It's just like an expectation,” Buchanan junior Mia Struss said. “It's what we do. It's what Buchanan does. Everybody comes together on Friday nights. Or like this (visit) happened on a Tuesday – we know we're going to have fun, so we're just like ‘Come out’ or ‘Are you guys going to the game? Oh yeah! Absolutely, we're going to the game.’ Everybody just comes together and has a fun time because it's what we do. It's what we're used to doing.”
There’s a well-worn path from the MHSAA’s East Lansing office to Buchanan during Battle of the Fans season.
As noted above, this was our sixth visit in nine years of BOTF, and current seniors were in fifth grade the first time we made the trip. We know how the section got started, we readily can recall leaders we’ve met in the past and cheers that pop immediately into our heads when we even think about coming back to see The Herd.
But instead of relying on that knowledge, we approached Tuesday like we’d never been to Buchanan before. We asked the assembled leaders – seniors Carter Aalfs, Nora Kaltenbach, Jade Smith, Rose Johnson and Bobby Ruth and juniors Ty Scurlock and Mia and her twin sister Morgan Struss – the questions we always ask. How did this get started? What has this meant to your school? Why did you get involved?
Their answers could’ve been word for word what Herd leaders told us in 2013 or 2018 or during any other trip. The conversation just reinforced how ingrained the cheering section has all the way down to the elementary students dreaming of joining in when they are older.
As they joked – but maybe not? – The Herd is a lifestyle.
This is how they live.
Game Time
Buchanan had to deal with a bit of a curveball this BOTF season. Originally, the Herd was going to host the MHSAA on Friday, Jan. 31. But a school-wide illness knocked out the Bucks’ opponent for that night, and the only feasible make-up for the BOTF visit was a Tuesday – generally the lesser-anticipated night for a big crowd compared to a Friday anywhere in the state.
But the move to a Tuesday only seemed to psych The Herd up more.
“It’s a challenge. But we’ve taken it and made it into something that’s normal,” Morgan Struss said.
“We can totally do this,” sister Mia figured. “Yes, it’s a Tuesday. But we’re The Herd. We got it.”
Leaders have an eight-year library of cheers, chants, dances and more to draw from, to go with ideas they’ve cooked up for this school year.
Leaders made sure to tell us this year they have added four new dances to the repertoire. And those were folded nicely into a night of what we’ve come to expect from near-annual trips to “The Woods.”
“We love to keep stuff, but we always like to think outside the box, get new things in and keep some of the old things,” Aalfs said. “And sometimes we'll bring back other things that we've taken out. It’s kinda like a cycle.”
Considering again this was a Tuesday night, the stands were filled – not just the student section, but both sides of the court – which makes sense with the perspective that a school with just more than 400 9th-12th grade students sold 1,200 Herd T-shirts this year to fund the section, provide for local families in need and fund scholarships.
“Neon Night” predictably was a hit, not just with the nearly 200 high schoolers filling their set of bleachers, but also the 30 or more middle school and younger students who formed a “Junior Herd” next to them.
Following a lights-out introduction of the home team, there were cheers for individual players and some kind of activity during every timeout and quarter break until the end of a 22-point win. Halftime included a senior class dance and a five-minute mashup of signing and grooving. Another new addition came at the end of the game, when students formed a long tunnel for the team to leave the court – and then joined together at midcourt one more time for The Herd’s signature “B-U-C-K-S Bucks!” chant.
Back to every year being “different.” Leaders had a tough time putting it into words at first before settling on “effortless” to describe the enthusiasm and cohesiveness of this year’s Herd. And frankly, we could tell the difference too as every student in the stands from front to top seemed engaged and having fun from warmups through the final buzzer.
“(This year) it's truly a feeling of unity,” Ruth added. “You don't understand how amazing it feels just looking up into those stands and just seeing everybody. I'm down on the floor, I'm saying my cheers, I'm leading everybody, and it's so great just seeing everybody all stacked up.”
Be like Buchanan
Take some of these tips from The Herd:
Find a teacher, find a friend: The Herd absolutely benefits from that trio of teachers – “shepherds” – who are dedicated to giving their time and whatever else the section needs. That, and administrative support, go a long way in helping a section get started and need to be cultivated. At the same time, it doesn’t take a lot of student power to get something going. Find a friend, or a few, tell other students you have a plan for the game coming up and just show up and do your thing. Do that once or a few times, and something is bound to take root and grow.
Open the gates: Herd leaders want anyone and everyone from all grades, friend groups, teams and clubs, etc., to be involved – and that’s part of its allure. Tuesday’s visit included something of a welcome with “MHSAA” painted on students’ backs, and one of the students had been at the school all of a week – but already had been pulled into a section meeting and Herd Snapchat. “Everybody's accepted at Buchanan, and we don't exclude anybody,” Ruth said. “It feels so nice to have everybody around. The more people, the more energy and spirit that I feel when we're having meetings and games and everything.”
Embrace trial and error. Because it’s fun: Not every chant or cheer or song is going to work. And that’s fine. Most great discoveries come after the first try. As long as ideas are reasonable, try them out. It’s a great way to find a section identity, and also to keep people engaged in coming up with ideas to help build it.
Make a plan: Once you’ve got a few ideas for theme nights, or a few cheers that have worked and taken hold, make a plan for game night – especially big ones where you’re hoping to get a lot of students to join in. That way you’re not left trying to figure out what’s next on the fly, and your classmates will get hooked on being part of something organized and well-led.
They said it best
Embrace the opportunity: “Come in with an open mind,” Smith said. “Don't be like, ‘That's lame. I'm too cool for that.’ What's the worst that will happen? People will laugh. Laugh with them. In the end you're actually enjoying yourself – you're having more fun than those people judging you.”
Trust me: “I always viewed (The Herd) as an icon, like what people go to see, and I never viewed it as something to do,” Scurlock said. “I always went there to watch them, or I was playing basketball. This year it was different. Last year I was behind them in the stands, going with them, but I wasn't consistent with it. Now that I’m in it, I wish I did it before. I regret it a lot. … I’ll ask my friends if they want to do this or that (with The Herd), and they’ll say they, ‘Nah, I don’t want to do that.’ I say, ‘Trust me, you do. You just don’t realize it.’”
Great expectations: “I started two years ago, and just looking at the class that had graduated that year (in 2018), that had started everything, that class was full of a lot of my friends and I felt very inspired looking at them,” Ruth said. “So I felt like this year, I really had to own up to that and say, ‘Hey, listen.’ I need to do what they did.”
They’ve got next: “When we go into traveling pep rallies, we're like, ‘Hey, this is going to be you someday. You're going to have to fill our shoes eventually.’ We're just trying to prepare them as much as possible so it will be a fun time for them.” Johnson said of the younger students coming up. “Whenever we say a chant, like ‘Do you know this chant?’ They're like yeah, and they start doing it. So it's just exciting. They just know us and know all the chants and what we do.”
Next stop on BOTF: We will finish the 2020 BOTF tour at Zeeland East with tonight’s boys basketball game against Hamilton. Our coverage of that trip will be posted to Second Half on Monday, and social media voting will begin Tuesday and continue through Thursday. The Battle of the Fans IX champion will be announced Feb. 21.
The Battle of the Fans is sponsored in part by the United Dairy Industry of Michigan.
PHOTOS: (Top) Buchanan students cheer on their classmates during Tuesday’s boys basketball game against Watervliet. (Middle) Senior Carter Aalfs gets plenty of air while leading the section’s roller coaster. (Photos by Jessica Elliott.)