Behind the hype for student athletes, creatively coordinated student section themes, and music pumping loudly from speakers at football games, you’ll find Blue Fan Group, a North club dedicated to improving and facilitating school spirit. 

Blue Fan Group focuses on maximizing support and spirit for student athletes on all of North’s teams. 

“The main goal of Blue Fan Group is to not only show spirit and pride for the North population and for the student body, but as well to make sure that everyone comes to the sporting events and [has] support,” said senior Anabella Laden, Blue Fan Group captain. “We don’t want someone to feel that they’re on this varsity sport or even on the JV or freshman team and feel that their student body doesn’t actually appreciate them.” 

Students may be familiar with Blue Fan Group’s presence at home football games, with members leading chants and playing music from the scaffolding in front of the student section side of the bleachers. However, Blue Fan Group’s contribution extends beyond those Friday night lights to amplify spirit and support towards all North athletics. 

“Scaffolding is a small, small, small part of what we do, but it’s very visible, so everybody remembers that,” said Lisa Spyrnal, Blue Fan Group adviser. “It’s such a small part of what we do but that’s what stands out.”

Blue Fan Group is generally in charge of coordinating ways to support and show spirit for North’s athletic teams.

“We figure out the themes for every week, we promote when all the student athletes events are, where the locations are, the timings and everything like that,” said Laden.

The club works throughout the school year and even during the summer to make improvements. Over this past summer, they made the decision to alter the student section arrangements in order to create a more positive experience for students during football games. 

“They also shifted where people sit in the bleachers not to exclude anyone but instead to compliment because people felt like there was crowding or there was negativity,” said Spyrnal. “Instead of calling anyone out specifically, shifting that a little bit so maybe the classes who were sitting next to each other could compliment their spirit versus butting heads about it.”

Blue Fan Group sets in place specific goals to enhance student engagement and spirit for North’s sports teams. One current goal of theirs is to further connect the student section crowd to the cheerleading team at football games, ensuring that specific cheers and chants are well-known amongst students. 

“One [goal] is to get the crowd to feed off the cheerleaders more,” said Spyrnal. “They’ve picked [a cheer], they’ve partnered with the cheerleaders and they put out a video…they’re trying to get at least one chant at a time so no one feels like they’re going to be wrong or they won’t know the words.” 

Blue Fan Group also works to incorporate student feedback on ways to improve participation and spirit amongst North into their projects. Some of these ways include taking student input on student section themes, or even their Song Requests Form, which allows students to suggest songs to be played from the scaffolding speakers at home games. 

“We try listening to [students] as much as possible because we can’t really have a student body that’s ready to go if we don’t listen to their feedback,” said Laden. 

The club works hard to make sure that athletic events are accessible and enjoyable for the North community to create a welcoming, supportive environment for students and North’s athletic teams. 

“I do love scaffolding and dressing up for all the themes, but genuinely, I just love seeing all the sports, I love seeing the people that spend endless hours working on their craft and their sport and being able to see them,” said Laden. “I love the camaraderie of everyone that comes together; it makes me so happy.”

Advisers Spyrnal and Joe Benoit encourage anyone who is interested in participating in Blue Fan Group to attend their all-club meetings once a month on Wednesdays in room 234 at 6:45 a.m. 

Blue Fan Group content, meeting updates and suggestion forms can be found on their Twitter @bluefangroup.