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For Eagles, cheering is just another part of the game
No team wins back-to-back state championships in any sport without being competitive. For the South Putnam softball team, that means working hard in the off-season to perfect their swings, stealing signs from the opposing coaches and even out-cheering the other team.
"I feel like cheering is just a part of the game," senior Jenna Jones said. "There's the kind of little games within the game. Like how you try to pick out the umpire's strike zone, or you pick out the other coach's signs.
"Cheering is kind of part of the game within the game. It's kind of like a battle with the other team."
It's a battle the Eagles take seriously, even if their opponent doesn't know it's a competition.
"But we win every time," senior Janet Crafton, the Eagles' centerfielder said. "If (the other team) is not cheering, it's like they're not in the game. We're just like, 'What's your problem?'"
South Putnam is 12-4 this season, which is four more losses than the team experienced during last year's title defense, but the team has been rolling the last few weeks.
Part of that is talent, but a lot of teams that expect to succeed would get down on themselves after a 6-4 start. The Eagles pick themselves up.
"I don't think they have as much team chemistry as we do," senior Mattie Varvel said. "If one person goes up to bat and strikes out, we'll come and we'll talk to each other and say, 'This is what's happening. He's not calling this.' Or, 'She's throwing this.'"
But more than just helping each other, they cheer for each other. Nearly everyone on the team has her own personalized chant.
"Mattie's is really classic," Jones said.
Mattie, Mattie, baby/aaah-oooo/you look so good to me/aaah-ooo/so hit the ball for me/(howl)
"If they do a cheer that has my name in it, it just makes me smile while I'm up to bat," Crafton said. "If we didn't cheer that would be so weird. Oh my gosh, I would think that my team hated me."
Because most of the players have been on softball teams since they were in tee-ball, they've had a lot of time to accumulate cheers.
They estimated at least 15-20 are in the cheer library, but it's probably even more than that.
There are cheers during warm-ups, cheers during pre-game meetings and cheers for the first hitter of the game.
For nearly every conceivable scenario, including long foul balls, the players know instinctively just what to say.
Holy sheep/that went deep/baaaack it up
There's not written record of the cheers. Like many traditions, they just get passed from word of mouth.
"It's all up here," junior Katie McHugh said, tapping her head.
The Eagles have few rules for their cheering (stay positive, only cheer when you're on offense. Most important: "We will never say, "Hey, batter, batter," on the field, so don't expect that. That just messes with our mojo. The cheers create good mojo and that creates bad mojo," Jones said."), but for the most part coach Chris Jones lets them go. As long as they're loud.
When the class of 2013 were freshmen Jones had them practice loud. Football teams sometimes pump crowd noise in during practice to prepare for a big game.
The Eagles just yell at practice.
"He didn't care what we said, just that we were yelling constantly," Crafton said of her coach, "Jones iterating that we had to communicate made our communication more fun for us to do and it's just brought us closer."
Coach Jones doesn't teach them any cheers. He's not really in the dugout while they're going on. But he encourages them to encourage each other.
With high school students, sometimes if they aren't building each other up, they're tearing each other down. Cheering nonstop leaves no time for that.
Sometimes they make up cheers ("I was singing Fergilicioius and I was just thinking, "To the B, to the A, to the S-E-H-I-T," Jones said. "I've got some natural skills. I'm kind of like the female Eminem."), but usually they've been passed along for so long nobody is quite sure where they came from.
There was a little froggy/sat upon a loggy/cheering for the other team/he had no sense at all/He fell into the water, and bumped his little head/and when he came back up again, this is what he said/He said, 'Go. Go go. Go, you mighty Eagles. Fight. Fight fight. Fight, you mighty Eagles/Win. Win win. Win, you mighty Eagles.'/Go, fight, win; until the very end. Ugh!
"We do really third-grade ones sometimes," Jones said. "Most of them are kind of like a song. ... That Froggy one sounds like little kids.
"Cheers are like songs. They go through popularity."
The girls learn cheers from all over. They started out doing cheers when they started playing softball. The nine-year-olds taught them to the seven-year-olds.
Then, as they got older, they started sharing cheers from their travel teams with their schools.
"If somebody learns a new cheer and we like it, then we teach it to someone else. Then they do it together and then it just spreads," Crafton said. "Generally, we'll tell someone, 'Hey, do this cheer with me.' And they'll be like, 'I don't know that one.'
"And then we'll say, 'It goes like this.' And then they'll say, 'OK, lets do it together.' But they're usually pretty simple and short. It's not like it's hard to learn."
Hey, Nikki, You're so fine ... and you're mine. I'll be yours, 'til the end of time.
The cheers aren't all passed on through the generations. Sometimes they're created.
When the popular a cappella movie "Pitch Perfect" came out last year it gave the Eagles some new ideas.
"We sing songs from 'Pitch Perfect' when (senior Nikki York) is up to bat," Jones said. "We sing, 'Oh, Nikki, you're so fine.' And then we switch it to 'Pitch Perfect,' like it's a riff-off."
The personalized cheers help the girl at bat, but they also distract the opponent.
"When you're batting and you hear your team cheer it keeps you up," senior Kelsey Whitaker said. "It makes it loud. When you're loud, it puts pressure on the team that's fielding."
Most of the cheers are catchy, but sometimes they just get weird with it.
One of their favorites is for everyone to pick out a different animal noise and shout that noise as loud as possible.
"Like I would be a cow, and (Janet) would be a pig, and (Mattie) would be a dog," Jones said.
How does that help?
"If you were playing against a team that does that (animal noises), don't you think you'd be like, 'What in the world?'" Varvel said. "We know when to cheer, and we know when to stay focused."
Going to a softball game at South Putnam is a show, so much so that Varvel even called the fans an "audience." The cheers are melodic and choreographed, even if some of the girls can't really sing.
"We like to think we're really musically talented," Crafton said. "Except for when (coach) Jones tells one of the players not to ever sing again. Like (one of the juniors). She's just off-key really bad."
"Or whenever (one of the senios) starts clapping off beat," Jenna Jones said. "We have to say, 'Stop. Please stop. Stop beating.'"
We want a single/just a little double/T-R-I, P-L-E/Home run; home run; home run.
Winning a lot of games, as South Putnam has for the past few years, can make a lot of enemies. But the Eagles' cheers -- and their coach -- helps keep them modest.
"(The opponents) think that because we cheer, we are cocky. But we're not. We just like to have fun," Jenna Jones said. "If you didn't do this kind of stuff, it just wouldn't be fun. It makes the game fun.
"I mean, the game itself is fun, but this makes it extra fun."
Cheering each other on and building that sense of together can also build confidence.
Not everyone with a questionable sense of pitch is brave enough to start singing, no matter how fun.
"The seniors before us made us feel comfortable with cheering, because a lot of high school teams don't think it's very cool to cheer. Like it's a young thing. But we make it cool," Crafton said.
Sometimes the coolness of cheering reaches extremes.
While none thought creating a new cheer would be better than hitting a home run, they had to think about hitting a single.
"It depends. Who is the pitcher?" Jenna Jones asked. "Maybe it's the only time I'm going to get to see this really awesome pitcher, and maybe it's the only chance I have to get a hit. Then I want that hit.
"But those (average) pitchers? You know you can just hit them whenever."
Crafton summed that sentiment up.
"I'd rather start an awesome cheer," she said. "Awesome cheers are hard to come by.
"These songs are eternal."