I think this is SO cool!
The Des Moines Register newspaper recently featured Simpson's SAE fraternity's activity of SuRpRiSiNg random small rural Iowa high school football teams by sporting their school colors & showing up in their stands on Friday nights.
Ch, ch, check it out:
"Kyle Kelso heard that some SIMPSON COLLEGE students might be driving down to watch his Mormon Trail High School football team play at Martensdale-St. Marys last Friday.
Whatever, he said.
Then they showed up.
And while we won't say it was chaos, the 30 members of Simpson's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity became what sportswriters call "a factor" in the game.
The SIMPSON men were dressed in Mormon Trail's black and gold. Their faces and bodies were painted. They stood on the sidelines and cHeErEd on the Saints, doing jumping jacks and push-ups when Mormon Trail scored. They helped the school's cheerleaders form a human tunnel when the players ran onto the field. The game officials even had to tell Kelso to keep "his fans" out of the corner of the end zone when they went WiLd CeLeBrAtInG a Mormon Trail touchdown.
"Hey, they're not with us," Kelso, Mormon Trail's head coach, told the officials.
But they were. For one night, anyway.
It's certainly unusual, a bunch of strangers going bOnKeRs over a rural Iowa high school football team, but Kelso thought it was wonderful.
"Just outstanding," he said. "They screamed for us for 48 minutes."
It wasn't exactly an accident, the fraternity men showing up in Martensdale to cheer for Mormon Trail in the eight-man game.
"We study things and look for an underdog that might need a little help at an away game when they don't have a lot of fans there," said Zach Rus, president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and a senior at SIMPSON. "People really seem to enjoy us, once they get used to us."
It usually takes a few minutes.
"We get there with body paint and our faces painted and some of us wearing these oBnOxIoUs clothes with the school colors and people wonder what in the world is going on," Rus said. "They look at us like we're cRaZy. We get a lot of CrAzY looks, anyway."
Then the game starts, the cHeErInG begins and the fans, players and coaches warm up in a hurry.
"The parents love us," Rus said. "We never yell anything negative about the other team. There's no alcohol involved. It's a totally sober event. It's totally positive."
The SIMPSON fraternity has been doing their small-town events the past 10 or 12 years. They do a few football games in the fall, then basketball games in the winter. It's always a small school - they know what three dozen extra fans can mean - and they arrive unannounced. Sometimes, it's a school where a former fraternity member is teaching, but often it's selected because they find a team that needs a bOoSt, playing a game a reasonable drive from Indianola.
"We all have supper together," Rus said. "Then we get in our cars and drive to the game. The fraternity uses it as a recruiting tool. We invite freshmen along and they have a bLaSt right along with us. It's RiDiCuLoUs, it's SO much FuN."
Last Friday's game at Martensdale-St. Marys was the first for the fraternity this year. The guys are looking at schedules, trying to decide where to make their next visit.
"We get invited back a lot," Rus said. "Some have even offered to pay us to come back to their games. We haven't done that, but it's nice they like us there. We sure have a BlAsT. It's fUn to go out and act like kids again. And we show you don't have to have alcohol involved to have a good time. Fraternities get a bad name sometimes. We don't want to do anything to give them a bad name."
It was such a good experience last Friday, people at Mormon Trail hope the men of Sigma Alpha Epsilon come to Garden Grove for the Saints' homecoming game.
"My wife is in the boosters club," Kelso said. "She told the guys the boosters would grill hamburgers for them if they'd come back."
And why not?
Mormon Trail won 45-28 last Friday.
Did the loud, new fans make a difference?
It's hard to say, but Kelso knows one thing.
"Having them there sure didn't hurt."
Written by John Carlson of The Des Moines Register
Learn more about Simpson's Greek Life here!
Did You Know?
One quarter of Simpson students are part of Greek Life in one of 3 sororities (Pi Beta Phi, Delta Delta Delta & Kappa Kappa Gamma) or one of 4 fraternities (Alpha Tau Omega, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Kappa Theta Psi & Lambda Chi Alpha).
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