Standing at a home football game, the crowd around you is roaring, but they’re not cheering about football — they’re treating the game like a social event. To combat this and to spread Blue Valley pride, two students founded BV’s newest club, Pep Club.

Seniors Savannah Ortiz, a non-athlete, and John Pikus, and athlete, said they founded Pep Club in order to encourage students to attend less-popular sporting events and to really appreciate the games while there.

“The goal of Pep Club is for the whole school to have more spirit and enthusiasm towards sporting events at the school, not only towards football but other sports as well,” Ortiz said.

The idea of the club originally came from Tiger Pride as a requirement for the class, brought up mainly by Tiger Pride’s sponsor science teacher Azie Taghizadeh.

“Everyone in Tiger Pride is split up into groups, and my group was assigned Pep Club (along with assemblies, Hoops for Hope, etc),” Ortiz said. “Each person in my group was then assigned to one main project and so John and I were assigned to Pep Club.”

Ortiz said although they just had their first meeting this week and they are trying to help the club gain momentum, many other teachers and students around BV are helping spread the word about the group to encourage participation.

“[John] helped me get the word out to other students and so did one of our sponsors Mrs. Braden,” she said. “Mrs. Braden made posters for us and she has helped us out a lot. [Seniors] Daniel Hegarty and Colin Wolf are also helping us run the club to figure out things such as future activities and meetings.”

Ortiz said she wants the BV student body to be supportive of their peers and engaged in the sports too.

“It is important that we get a lot more students to attend events, but the students need to be engaged in the games as well,” she says. “If you show up and just go on your phone the whole time, why did you even come? We want to have people in pep club help get others excited and engaged in the sporting events coming up.”