The first time Cameron Spera cheered for Syracuse University’s football team, she was standing inside the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. SU was playing Penn State, and the broadcast and digital journalism major, who was a freshman at the time, was surrounded by thousands of screaming sports fans.

“You’re in front of 30,000 people, and that’s just a normal thing,” Spera said on what it’s like to dance in front a stadium full of rowdy fans.

Now a junior, Spera is one of the captains of the SU dance team and is gearing up to support the SU women’s basketball team for its Final Four game in Indianapolis.

Spera’s team is part of the Spirit Squad, which is a collection of three groups that cheer for SU athletic teams in order to provide support, as well as to pump up and entertain the crowds. The cheer team, the dance team and the student-run pep band, otherwise known as the Sour Sitrus Society, all attend SU games and sports functions.

Together with Otto the Orange, the three groups work together during games to give the best possible experience for the players and crowd.

As Orange fans across campus prepare to travel to watch SU teams compete in March Madness, Spirit Squad members are packing to travel to the women’s game in Indianapolis as well as the men’s Final Four game in Houston.

Arman Hussain is another Spirit Squad member preparing to travel. A senior biochemistry major, Hussain has been one of the student co-band directors of the Sour Sitrus Society for the past two years. Along with Spera, Hussain will be traveling to Indianapolis to support the women’s team.

Unlike Spera, Hussain has actually been to a Final Four game before. During his freshman year, Hussain traveled to Atlanta to cheer for the men’s team. The Final Four games, Hussain said, are much more than what people see on television, because the itineraries for the bands and dancers are filled with performances, pep rallies and battle of the band competitions, in addition to game-time performances.

Although the Spirit Squad performs with the teams during their entire seasons, for tournaments such as March Madness, certain limitations come into effect. The Final Four games, for example, only allow 12 out of the dance and cheer teams’ rosters to attend, and 29 pep band members are required to travel as well.

This can make choosing who goes and who stays behind difficult. Although both Hussain and Spera were able to travel for games during their respective freshmen years, traveling performers are typically picked based on seniority, Spera said, or in the case of the pep band, are based off of auditions and who is the most active with the group.

This year, four members of the dance team and eight from the cheer team will be attending the women’s game, Spera said. Because of this, it is very important for the Spirit Squad to all practice together ahead of time to coordinate songs and dances. Since the teams perform during timeouts in the game, their routines, cheers and music must be planned or else they risk standing around and looking confused, Spera said.

To do this, the band must share its music with the dancers so that the best routines can be selected. The Spirit Squad is like a big family, Hussain said, and the groups work together as a big cohesive unit with Otto the Orange to put on the best show possible.

Now that the Final Four is days away, Spera said she is excited to support the women’s team, as well as the men’s, in the final March Madness games.

“To be quite honest, I don’t think I could be more excited,” Spera said. “We’ve sort of been with them since the beginning and it’s a really fun thing to see them through to the end.”

Published on March 31, 2016 at 7:59 pm

Contact: emmichae@syr.edu