On Friday, Sept. 5, the New Trier football team hosted the Warren Blue Devils in their 2014 home opener. Amidst a fairly heavy rain and with an even less promising forecast looming, the bleachers rocked and an unusually pumped-up New Trier student section was already nearing full capacity and getting rowdy with school-issued thundersticks and noisemakers.
This atmosphere would have been impressive in itself, but the game was still 30 minutes from kickoff. Even the most casual Trevian football fan came to an optimistic realization that night: school spirit is currently stronger than it has ever been.
When Brian Doll was hired as New Trier’s newest football coach in April, there wasn’t much buzz among the student body.
Why would there be? After years of mediocrity, football had taken a backseat to hockey in students’ minds.
Doll had turned a struggling Elk Grove football program into a perennial conference championship threat. So wins were expected in Winnetka, but a complete culture shift? Not so much.
From the outset, the NT football power elite established an aura of inclusiveness. If the 2014 team was to be a winning team, it would be everyone’s winning team.
This collective fandom started with the “Green Team” sweatshirts, a longtime staple of the senior experience. The process of actually getting a sweatshirt to wear to athletic events had been notoriously exclusive in past years.
Different stories float through the halls pertaining to how the process became the large-scale operation it is today, providing sweatshirts to over 500 seniors. But no matter the cause, the visual effect is noticeable: on game days, hallways are flooded with the iconic sweatshirts. It is the clearest proof of a more unified senior class.
Unique measures like this help to explain why, on that rainy September night, the student section was out in full force an entire 30 minutes before the game even started.
They help to explain why a student section once known to be empty as soon as the second half began (after that night’s Dance Team halftime performance) was still causing communication problems for the Warren offense on their desperate last-minute drive that ultimately failed.
In the week leading up to the Trevians’ home debut, Doll organized a student tailgate before the game. Similar to something that most major college football programs have instituted, he blocked off a chunk of the Northfield campus parking lot for students to get excited for the game together.
To take the time to organize such an event is one thing; for students to take Doll up on the offer, showing up in hordes before getting their first chance to see the new-look football team? It was an admirable feat, especially when considering students’ recent history of relatively poor support for certain sports.
The numerous steps taken by Doll and other team leaders have done wonders in boosting student enthusiasm, but perhaps the biggest boon to the school-wide attitude shift has been the unequivocally strong performance from the football team.
Winning truly is the best form of marketing, and this year’s squad has proven just that. A 5-0 start, its best since 1996, led to a number 19 state ranking and a packed student section for both home games thus far.
Friday morning meetings between football team representatives and students in the school EPI center, another welcomed Doll initiative, have without a doubt proved to solidify relations between team and student body and promote that night’s game. But students don’t show up to watch a super excited football team. They show up to watch a dominant football team, and so far this season, that’s what they’ve gotten.
This complete 180° in student support was never more evident than on Oct. 2 in Park Ridge. In a matchup of Central Suburban League () South frontrunners, the undefeated Trevians traveled to face the 5-0 Maine South Hawks in the game of the season to that point.
Maine South had not lost a conference game in their past 66 (66!) tries. New Trier kept it close, staying within 3 points into the 4th quarter, but the Hawks pulled away late after a rain delay.
While they didn’t get the final result they wanted, the football team only had to look behind its own bench to observe at least one moral victory. A contingent of at least 200 students had traveled 30 minutes on a stormy Thursday night to cheer on their undefeated football team.
A month-long and presumably tireless effort from New Trier football to rouse the student body had culminated in this, a visiting student section that was almost as big and arguably louder than that of the IHSA powerhouse home team’s section.
Will this type of support carry on through the year and with other sports? Nothing is for sure. But Doll and the rest of the football team have proved one thing: an entire school, from the entire student body all the way to the teachers, alumni, and surrounding community, can be united by the revitalization, both on and off the field, of an athletic team. Student support is in ready supply; just give them the thundersticks.