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From pep bands to crowd involvement students are raising their school spirit.

Sara Melby

March 2, 2012

Many have raised concern about school spirit and its effect on BC athletics. Is that effect positive, negative, or just neutral? Is school spirit lacking or thriving?

The men’s varsity basketball team has had a winning season, finishing third in the Appalachian Athletic Conference. However, the team’s ranking had been first earlier in the season. Would a little more school spirit have helped to bump them back up to first?

	RAs Lydia Freeman, Angi Highlander and Erin Darnell express their school spirit with the BC Ram.

Keith Jennings, assistant coach of men’s basketball, said school spirit is essential to the team’s winning streak, and the crowd’s cheering is what gets them in the zone to play and to win.

Efforts are being made to increase school spirit at BC, including the pep band. This is an ensemble from the music department that plays at the home basketball games with the purpose of “pepping” up the crowd.

Bryant Moxley, head of the music department, gives information about the pep band’s development.

“The music department is thrilled to begin a program of athletic bands,” says Moxley. “Several years ago, we tried a pep band for basketball, but we were not able to sustain it.  Now we have a full-time professor, Dr. Charles Priest, who is the director of instrumental studies for the music department.  Our band and orchestra program is growing and we believe that athletic bands are a logical next step for that growth to continue.  We hope the athletic bands will help build school spirit and provide a creative outlet for our instrumentalists.”

Representing the Ram-Fam section at home basketball games, senior Morgan Jefferson has several ideas for BC school spirit now and in the future.

“I’m really hoping to make a change in the support community for BC athletics,” said Jefferson. “What I want to do to is get the crowd involved at games by starting crowd chants and wearing team colors, and also announcing game times and acknowledging the team’s victories at convocation. I really hope that the effort that I put into BC school spirit continues in others even after I leave the school."

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