Standing at a 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, two students founded Blue Valley’s newest Pep Club.

Seniors Savannah Ortiz and John Pikus said they founded Pep Club in order to encourage students to attend less popular sporting events and appreciate the games.

“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.

Pep Club came from Tiger Pride and mainly it’s 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). Each person in my group was then assigned to one main project and so John Pikus and I were assigned to Pep Club.

She said many other teachers and students around BV are helping spread the word about Pep Club.

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

Ortiz said she wants the students 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?”

She said Pep club would help people get excited about the events and help people cheer on the athletes.