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Change Does Frankfort's 'Cage' Good
February 5, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
FRANKFORT – Senior Christian Purchase, a Frankfort basketball player, remembers sitting in his school’s cheering section as a freshman and thinking he’d hate to be on the other team.
It wasn’t because his Panthers were winning the game. Instead, Purchase put himself in an opposing player’s shoes, at the free throw line, trying to shoot while half of Frankfort’s student body yelled “Everyone is watching you!”
“My heart broke for them,” said junior Madison Stefanski, also a varsity player. “They would stand there to shoot their free throws, and they would look at you. And it’s just like, ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s scary, a whole student section yelling that at you.”
Frankfort students call them “You” cheers, and they made up the section’s entire repertoire before this winter. But instead of chanting, “You can’t do that” this season, the Panthers are proving you definitely can ... change an entire cheering culture.
This year’s smallest Battle of the Fans finalist – with only 152 students – admits to its negative past. But “The Cage” also has embraced its positive present and future as it works to renew its reputation and change the tone across its corner of the Lower Peninsula.
“You just need a couple people to start it, a couple positive people. And they’ll tell people, and everybody will get really excited,” Frankfort senior Allison Evans said.
“Because I feel like everyone knows that’s (negative cheering) is wrong,” Stefanski continued, “but it just takes a few people to say, ‘We could change it. Why not?’ And then it all just started.”
Frankfort on Monday was the third stop on this year’s Battle of the Fans III tour. MHSAA staff and Student Advisory Council members already have visited Buchanan and Bridgman, and will head to Traverse City West on Friday and finish at Beaverton on Feb. 14. 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.
To fully appreciate what’s new in The Cage, it’s best to start with Frankfort’s near past.
Instead of the current 80 percent turnout for home boys and girls basketball games – or closer to 100 percent plus middle schoolers for Monday’s boys game against McBain – the Panthers’ student section used to fill about halfway on its best nights.
Those who showed might stand for the first quarter, but by the third everyone was sitting – and many were yelling not the greatest stuff. And woe to the opposing player who had to take the ball out of bounds on the baseline in front of the Frankfort student section – there was no telling what might be hurled his or her way.
The Frankfort students were having fun, but also got bored. It’s not that they felt the “You” cheers were wrong – maybe just customary – but they definitely didn’t feel right. And the negativity frequently drew the ire or opposing parents, administrators and others who remembered bad things from the past.
“Before a game would start, people would be like, ‘Watch your cheering section,’” Evans said. “And this year, it would be like, ‘You watch, and after the game tell me if you have a problem.’”
Instead, opposing athletic directors, coaches, officials and parents have congratulated leaders and athletic director David Jackson on the section’s transformation.
Purchase started considering starting a cheering section during football season. But it took another embarrassment to set The Cage in motion.
He and five or six of his buddies formed a mini section for volleyball games this fall. They were a given to show in the area of bleachers cut out of the ball at one end of the court.
But during the Panthers’ District volleyball opener, a 3-0 loss, they were figuratively pushed aside as Fife Lake Forest Area students took over.
“We kinda felt beaten,” Purchase said. And then next day, he paid Jackson a visit. “I told him I have theme ideas. I have cheers. I have kids that want to do this. Let’s get this rolling.”
Jackson gave his blessing, and teacher/coach Jaime Smith pledged plenty of support. And in a school of 150 students, word spread quickly.
A group of leaders –all athletes – began to plan while keeping an open door to anyone in the school with an idea to add. Volleyball players Evans, Stefanski and senior Zoe Bone joined Purchase and junior Ryan Plumstead, who also was in the mini section and also plays on the hoops team. Senior wrestler Jacob Chappell is a bit of a commanding presence among his classmates and was a transformative addition to the leadership group – “If Jakes wants to change, everyone changes,” Stefanski said – and “The Cage” name was thrown out randomly by another classmate.
They taped step-by-step demonstration videos of cheers and dressed in theme night costumes – one in a toga, another in neon, a third in rain gear – for a pep assembly to explain not only how students would now cheer, but why they were making a switch.
Student attendance at basketball games has doubled, and The Cage also cheers on Chappell’s fledging wrestling team. Purchase and Smith visited the junior high to explain the new cheering philosophy and also motivate those grades to find the next leaders of the group.
Drama students come from practice dressed up and ready to yell. The artists are there too, and one is designing a giant Fathead decal to be added to The Cage’s already elaborate decorations. Students who had never attended a sporting event are now regulars.
There’s been only one complaint (and it’s not a bad thing) – that the section is too loud.
“When you’re out there and getting negative cheers from the other school, or even your own school, you kinda feel like you’re on your own island if you miss a shot or airball a shot,” Plumstead said. “When you’re getting positive cheers and miss the shot, and the crowd is like, ‘Yeah, go get ‘em next time,’ you shake it off and you’re back in the game.”
On occasion, a few students might try to dip back into the negative. But now they’re the ones made to feel on an island. “We tell them that’s not how we do things anymore,” Stefanski said. “We didn’t’ realize how bad it was, saying negative things, until we saw other schools do it.”
But the positive spin is starting to spread. The Cage found a few students from a neighboring school in its section during one game. Other schools are forming sections and starting theme nights – Purchase has traveled to a few to check them out – and it’s always a compliment when students from other schools tweet they wish they went to Frankfort so they could join in the fun.
All of the reaction seems to say what leaders of “The Cage” would most like to hear.
“That we turned this around completely. We changed the games, the feel, the entire environment at Frankfort,” Purchase said.
“Not only that we changed our school, but we’re changing the Northwest Conference,” Plumstead added. “Not only are we changing the culture at Frankfort, but changing it everywhere in northwest Michigan.”
Battle of the Fans III is sponsored in part by the United Dairy Industry of Michigan.
PHOTOS: (Top) Frankfort senior Jacob Chappell leads "The Cage" in a roller coaster during Monday's game against McBain. (Middle) The cheering section, still dressed for "icy" winter, cheer on the Panthers during the first half. (Photos courtesy of Jaime Smith.)
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Apply Now for Scholar-Athlete Awards
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
October 15, 2018
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
One of the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s most popular programs, the Scholar-Athlete Award, will again present 32 $1,000 scholarships to top student-athletes at member high schools during the 2018-19 school year.
The MHSAA-Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete Award highlights the value extracurricular activities play in the total education of high school students, often improving their academic achievements in the process. The Scholar-Athlete Award is in its 30th year. Since the award’s inception in 1988-89, Farm Bureau Insurance has presented more than $764,000 in scholarships through this program.
The first 30 scholarships will be presented on a graduated basis across the MHSAA’s traditional class structure. From Class A schools, six boys and six girls will receive scholarships; from Class B schools, four boys and four girls; from Class C schools, three boys and three girls; and from Class D schools, two boys and two girls will be honored. The final two scholarships will be awarded at-large to minority recipients, regardless of school size. The scholarships may be used at the institution of higher learning the recipients attend during the first year at those colleges.
Applications from individual schools will be limited to the number of available scholarships in their enrollment class. Class A schools may submit the names of six boys and six girls, Class B schools may submit four boys and four girls, Class C may submit three boys and three girls and Class D may submit two boys and two girls.
Students applying for Scholar-Athlete Awards must be graduating during the 2018-19 school year, be carrying an unrounded 3.5 (on a 4.0) grade-point average and have won a varsity letter prior to senior year in a sport in which the MHSAA sponsors a postseason tournament: baseball, girls and boys basketball, girls and boys bowling, girls competitive cheer, girls and boys cross country, football, girls and boys golf, girls gymnastics, ice hockey, girls and boys lacrosse, girls and boys skiing, girls and boys soccer, softball, girls and boys swimming & diving, girls and boys tennis, girls and boys track & field, girls volleyball and wrestling.
Applicants will be required to show involvement in other school and community activities and submit an essay on the importance of sportsmanship in educational athletics.
Information – including answers to a number of frequently asked questions – is available online on the Scholar-Athlete Award page of the MHSAA Website. Applications are available in digital format only, either via the Scholar-Athlete Award page or directly at https://www.mhsaa.com/scholarship. All applications must be submitted online by 4 p.m. Nov. 30.
A committee composed of school administrators from across the state will select finalists and winners in early February, with the winners to be announced later in the month. All applicants, finalists and scholarship recipients will be announced on the MHSAA Website. The 32 scholarship recipients will be recognized during the MHSAA Boys Basketball Finals at the Breslin Student Events Center in East Lansing on March 16, 2018.
Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan was founded in 1949 by Michigan farmers who wanted an insurance company that worked as hard as they did. Those values still guide the company today and are a big reason why it is known as Michigan’s Insurance Company, dedicated to protecting the farms, families, and businesses of this great state. Farm Bureau Insurance agents across Michigan provide a full range of insurance services—life, home, auto, farm, business, retirement, Lake Estate®, and more—protecting nearly 500,000 Michigan policyholders.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,500 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract more than 1.4 million spectators each year.