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Three Days With Hoya Blue
By John Hawkes

Day 2 (Tuesday, August 30): NSO Pep Rally, Gaston Hall

"This just screams fire code violation," Stephen hollers, barely audible, over the cheers of the Class of 2009.

"Reminds me of the Cal State Fullerton game," I yell back. He doesn't hear me. I can barely hear myself.

Gaston Hall is bursting at the seams, freshmen and NSO advisors alike overflowing into the 3rd floor lobby where Hoya Blue has set up two tables in order to handle what figures to be its largest rush of the week.

I arrived twenty minutes ahead of the 10:00pm start time-too early, I thought. Nobody shows up on time for events at Georgetown. But it turns out I've once again underestimated Hoya Blue and the freshman class. If my walk up the Healy staircases tonight is any indication, I'd do well to wear body armor for the mad dash through the MCI Center concourses to the student sections this winter.

Tonight, the nervous excitement is contagious. At the front entrance to Gaston Hall, a cast of about half a dozen Hoya Blue die-hards, faces painted, many accenting their I Bleed Hoya Blue shirts with capes and blue wigs, ready themselves. Some pace nervously, some jump up and down in place; they stop only occasionally to huddle, going over last-minute directions or psyching each other up. Across the lobby, I'm leaning against a post, staring into space, gathering my own thoughts, taking in the scene before me in silence.

In short, everybody in Hoya Blue to a man or woman appears to be re-enacting the very same rituals we perform in the student section at the MCI Center before a big game.

Tonight has the feel of a big game.

Ray Borgone is working the front table tonight for Hoya Blue. He provides an interesting contrast to the scene unfolding behind him. Instead of a wig and a cape, Ray wears a Hoya Blue shirt and a backwards cap-I'd be hard-pressed to pick him out of the crowd in the student section, even though he's sat near me on a few occasions. And while the sounds I'm most accustomed to hearing from the Hoya Blue cast working the pep rally tonight are the primal screams and chants of the front row at the MCI Center, Ray's soft-spoken manner has me perpetually leaning towards him tonight desperately trying to make out what he's saying over all of the noise.

Ray turns out to be unquestionably the workhorse of Hoya Blue volunteers during my visits with the club. Last Sunday, he showed up at Hoya Blue's table fresh from his stint as a Student Advisor for the McDonough School of Business and stayed on for the last three or four hours of the long day/evening, even staying around after hours with Kurt and Tom to count the day's profits. And, as it will turn out, on Saturday at the women's soccer game he'll volunteer himself to relieve one of the Hoya Blue volunteers cooking burgers and hot dogs for a smaller than expected crowd of grill patrons even though it means missing most of the first half of the game. Tonight, he's one of only four volunteers (counting myself) who never spend more than a token moment inside Gaston Hall during the Pep Rally. Instead, he helps collect email addresses and t-shirt orders from not only freshmen, but also a number of NSO volunteers and more than a couple members of the Georgetown football team.

While he's hardly the most noticeable member of Hoya Blue's new core group, Ray's the trademark of their most important new constituency.

Among the most die-hard of Georgetown's student section fans, the type I typically find huddled together on the floor of the MCI Center lobby at 10:30am before a noon Saturday game downing Egg McMuffins and reciting lyrics to "Jeff Green's Mom", there are two distinct breeds.

One breed I like to call the "Front Row Faction" for obvious reasons. They tend to sit in the front row. They're vocal, they're passionate, they're full of energy, and they're on camera ten times a game. They're also jumping around in face paint and wigs behind me about to go on stage in Gaston Hall. This evening, there's Kurt and Tom, Greg Muha, Megan O'Donnell, and Mark Murphy. You'd be hard pressed to find folks more dedicated to Hoya basketball than these guys, and more willing to work their tails off to support their team. In fact, last season Kurt famously got himself in trouble for declaring himself to be on a "whole 'nother level" when it came to being a student section fan. These are the guys (and gals) who I can imagine will end up with several visible leadership positions in Hoya Blue, the ones who are going to convert hundreds of new students to Hoya Paranoia.

A couple rows behind them at every game are guys like Ray and Steve (who calls himself "your stereotypical third row fan"). Same level of dedication, same work ethic, same passion for Bleeding Hoya Blue. Just less face paint to show for the whole effort. While it's a foregone conclusion that both Ray and Steve will end up with high positions in Hoya Blue this year, I don't think it would matter to either of them if they were just "that guy Ray" or "that guy Steve" from Hoya Blue.

"I think when your heart is really into something," Ray tells me, "and you really believe in the cause, you don't mind going the extra mile--and I sure as heck believe in Hoya Blue."

In my opinion, the single most important reason that the previous leadership of Hoya Blue failed was that they didn't have a Ray or a Steve.

There's nothing glamorous about standing in the atrium of Gaston Hall with no view of the NSO Pep Rally manning a table whose main customers are all inside chanting "We Are Georgetown". But in a way what's going on outside Gaston Hall is as important-maybe even more important-than what's going on inside for the long-term survival of the group.

"Sometimes," as Steve puts it, "leadership is precisely about rolling up your sleeves."

Too often recently, Hoya Blue's been run entirely by people who want to do the glamorous stuff. Previous Hoya Blue leaders have been criticized for everything from trying to tape off sections of the front row at MCI for themselves before games, shutting off Midnight Madness volunteer positions and other fringe benefits to everyone but close friends, or concentrating on throwing party-centric events with little connection to athletics. It all comes down to the same basic problem-nobody's willing to do the un-glamorous leg-work to keep the club running and truly build a broad base of support for Georgetown athletics. Nobody's been willing to roll up their sleeves.

Which means sitting at a table in the sun for hours and pushing back your quitting time several different times. It means having members meet in Red Square on a freezing night in November to put up flyers for a Patriot League football game. It means actually going to sports like soccer, field hockey, women's basketball, and volleyball. And it means having people like Ray and Steve who are willing to pass on an audience of 1,500 freshmen for a table and 1,000 shirts.

Actually, Ray probably says it best himself:

"Really, everybody has some talent or ability that they can bring to the table, which is great because it makes the club very inclusive. Not everyone needs to know how many points Brandon Bowman puts up per game. If a guy or gal believes in Georgetown and Georgetown Athletics and wants to make a difference, that's all that counts in my book."

As for the die-hards who are about to go onstage: even within the "Front Row Faction" of Hoya Blue there's an interesting personality difference that I'm interested in seeing tonight. It's something I picked up on prior to the Hoya Blue elections last May, when I sat in a room in the Southwest Quad with a few other attendees and watched Kurt and Tom practice their speeches. Something that Kurt has reminded me of apprehensively several times since last May and, to be fair, I've joked with him about several more. Something that I could tell on Sunday was bugging him even then, the man who's arguably the most well known fan in Georgetown's student section thanks to his face-paint, wig, and cheering routine and his outgoing manner at games:

Kurt's scared to death of public speaking.

And so, with the strains of his music soundtrack booming through Gaston Hall accompanying Hoya Blue's opening PowerPoint slideshow, I sprint upstairs to the balcony to take in the atmosphere of Hoya Blue's first big game of the new season. And to see which of Kurt's personalities wins out.

Even in the cheap seats, it's tough to get a view. Students are standing three deep even in the back aisles of the balcony. As a matter of fact, everybody is standing at this point, in the throes of one of the seemingly endless rounds of "HOYA!! SAXA!!" and "We Are Georgetown!!" It's hot up here-not in the sunburn-heat exhaustion way Sunday was, but rather a steamy, almost atmospheric sense.

It really does scream fire code violation.

As it turns out, Kurt's big moment lasts about thirty seconds, as he introduces himself to the Class of 2009 and quickly hands the microphone over like a hot potato to Tom, who serves as the closest thing to an emcee for the Hoya Blue portion of the event. Tom handles the task with ease, alternating seamlessly between working the crowd and handling the run of the program. It's a seemingly simple task, keeping a Pep Rally flowing from one act to another, but crucial in a way lost on all of the freshmen in attendance. If there was one event that began to make people on campus question the previous leadership of Hoya Blue, it was their performance during last year's NSO Pep Rally, which included a fair share of cursing, bizarre skits, and more than little pre-game drinking. In fact, one of the memorable moments tonight happens after the Rally is over, when an NSO volunteer stops by the Hoya Blue table to thank the members who performed on stage for being so much better than the previous year.

The entrance of the Georgetown football team sends me scurrying back down the stairs from the standing-room only sweatbox of the Gaston Hall balcony. At the very least, with the football team filing onto the stage-they'd spent the previous fifteen minutes squeezed in the entranceway-I'll probably have a decent view of Bob Benson's speech.

Benson quickly hits upon one of the lasting themes of tonight's Pep Rally, one that will be repeated by several coaches hereafter. You made a great choice coming to Georgetown, he tells the freshman audience to understandably appreciative cheering. It's a simple yet profound statement to make. After all, when you think about it, "school spirit"-even if it's done through the domain of the University's official club for supporting athletics-really begins with pride in the school. All of these students in Gaston Hall tonight chanting "HOYA SAXA!!" aren't doing so because they recognize its importance to a basketball or a football game. The vast majority have little knowledge of the historical importance of the "We Are Georgetown" cheer-even if you confine that history to its brief but happy revival just over a year ago by the basketball coach who will close out tonight's program.

Tonight's Pep Rally, even though it features representatives from both basketball teams, the football team, men's and women's soccer, volleyball, and just about every cheer and dance group on campus, is less about Georgetown the sports program than Georgetown the University.

I'm reminded of the most unusual part of the NSO Pep Rally I attended on the Village C Patio some five years ago. During the NSO Video at the end of the Rally, there was a montage of interviews with students as they unpacked their belongings in their still-empty dorm rooms. Invariably, the single question posed to each student was: "So, how do you feel about being at Georgetown?"

Most students responded with some mixture of…well, nervous excitement, usually punctuated by adjectives like "AWESOME!!" and "AMAZING!!"

Except for this one kid at the end, who answered with a sort of detached grumble:

"Well, I didn't get into my first choice school, so Georgetown was kind of my back up, and I guess it's okay being here."

Needless to say he was loudly booed.

I never understood why the NSO editors felt compelled to include that kid in the video, unless they had decided to play the role of the football coach tacking up bulletin-board material from an opponent in his team's locker room to psych up his players. Yeah, you really think that little brat knows about how great Georgetown is? Why don't we show him!!

I don't know whether Bob Benson in reality is a bulletin-board material kind of coach. But tonight at least, he's doing a great job in an inspirational role, getting 1,500 students to go out there and win one for the University.

For their part, the Hoya Blue emcees are making an important subtle contribution to the program as well. It's one thing to tell people…"Well…we go to basketball games, football games, soccer games, lots of stuff…and we go crazy" and so on, leaving it at that. The key step that each successive member remember tonight is taking is to tell people: "Oh yeah, these would be the times where we'll be going to those games and going crazy."

Yep, everybody's psyched up and full of spirit. They're glad they made a great choice coming to Georgetown. But most importantly, they know there's a women's soccer game the following Saturday, and that the Multi-Sport Facility is hosting its first game on September 17th.

John Thompson III's arrival near our table sends Stephen about as close as a mild-mannered Hoya Blue workhorse can get to teenage groupie-level hysterics. Which is to say he actually raises his voice, directing Coach Thompson towards the proper door for his grand entrance. At this point, even the atrium has reached a sauna-like atmosphere. JTIII in mere minutes has already broken out a towel to dab beads of sweat off of his bald dome. Ray's gone beyond perspiring to full out sweating despite having seemingly not ventured more than 10 feet from his table since I arrived. I personally have changed shirt combinations at least three times.

If we could only play basketball home games in Healy.

John Thompson III has reportedly always been bashful about the attention he receives from the student section. He's never been a huge fan of the "JT3!!" cheer that accompanies his introduction over the P.A. system at the MCI Center. He only grudgingly accepts the fact that the Roman numeral III appears on the back of the official student section t-shirt.

He's a modest guy. Who happens to be approaching rock star status on campus.

If you want proof that Georgetown basketball is making a comeback, I'd offer up the reaction JTIII gets anytime he enters a room of students-especially this particular room with 1,500 new freshmen. Stephen tells me later he's never seen that kind of reaction from a group of students before. I once saw then-President Bill Clinton speak in Gaston Hall my freshman year-in fact, I sat in almost the exact same spot in the balcony that I stood in to listen to Hoya Blue tonight.

It's close. Very close.

JTIII is also a soft-spoken guy, muffled several times by the excited mumblings and raucous cheers of his audience, who he nonetheless commands in the same unassuming but confident manner with which he strolls the sidelines. There's his now obligatory teaching session on "We Are Georgetown" Chanting 101, of course, with help from the GU Pep Band and a sizable chunk of his team's roster from the upper deck.

But Thompson's speech, like Benson's before him, turns on a simple but powerful message:

"We need you."

Hoya Blue couldn't have said it better themselves.

And the truth is Georgetown's sports teams do need their fellow students. The fact of the matter is that even in the midst of our most successful basketball season in five years, too many seats in the student section lay open at times. This is to say nothing of the fact that plenty of empty seats remain at Georgetown football games, Georgetown soccer games, even Georgetown lacrosse games, despite that sport's seemingly perfect storm of traditionally successful programs, regional interest, and free tickets. If there's one thing I'm looking forward to finding out about this new group of Hoya Blue leaders, it's how they put students in those seats from soccer season in August through lacrosse season in May.

One of my favorite traditions at Georgetown is learning the Fight Song. I actually learned it the first time on a school bus at a summer program on the Hilltop before my Senior Year of High School, thanks to a couple of helpful counselors. Somehow, I managed to remember it when I actually arrived on campus, which came in handy about 6,000 times during NSO.

Of course, I never got to perform it to win a ticket on a Hoya Blue roadtrip. I playfully taunt the three contestants chosen from the crowd, who each flub their initial attempts to get from "How long has it been?" to "The yell that wins the day" in one piece, forgetting of course that I myself was called out for miswriting the lyrics to the Fight Song in one of my game recaps last season.

The large crowd shows up in a big way in Hoya Blue's take for the evening. Tonight alone, students gobble up 164 "I Bleed Hoya Blue" shirts, and bring the total number of emails collected for the Hoya Blue mailing list to 380. I happen to be standing next to the cash box (which looks suspiciously like a shoe box) for most of the night, and it's noticeably stuffed the final time I sneak a glance.

By the time I leave, it's close to Midnight on the final evening before the start of classes for the Fall 2005 Semester. It's been over a year since I graduated from Georgetown, but I'm as excited for the start of a new year as most of the freshman leaving Gaston.

To be continued...