BSM sports teams dress up for gamedays
Girls’ volleyball players show off their gameday dress up outfit.
For many BSM athletes, game days, match days, and meet days are an exciting part of the season. Teams spend the school day anticipating the competition they will face after school. This anticipation is carried into the school day through team dress ups. From footie pajamas to suits and ties, dressing up on game days is a common tradition that most BSM sports teams participate in.
Sports teams dress up for different reasons. For the boys’ soccer team, dressing up is important to remind people at school that it’s game day. “We dress up to make sure everyone is aware that we have a game that night in hopes that this will increase the number of fans that come to the game. If it is a big game, we might dress up little more seriously, business casual, to also have that mental note all day that we have a big game coming tonight,” said senior captain of the boys’ soccer team, James Norkosky.
While you may find the boys’ soccer team dressing in serious attire, the BSM girls’ soccer team chooses a more creative way of recruiting fans to the turf. Recently, team had a unique dress up idea. “We dressed up as a black cats. Cats because we are the kittens and black for the funeral of the team that we just had beat,” said senior girls’ soccer captain Maddie Stoks.
While dressing up may seem like all fun and games, there are serious consequences if a member of the team decides not to adequately prepare for game day. “If a team member is not wearing the dress up or not carrying a water bottle and the captains find out, they have to stop and drop all their stuff no matter where they are and do five pushups,” Stoks said.
The girls’ cross country team employs their own strategy when deciding what to dress up as. “Ultimately, the captains decide what to dress up as, but we do like to get input from the team. In the beginning of the season, we usually don’t have our apparel right away, so we have to get creative. For the more important meets like conference and sections, the dress ups have been the same since my first years on the team. For the conference race, we wear our race jerseys, sometimes with shorts, and for sections, it is dress like the coaches,” girls’ cross country senior captain Sammi Tarnowski said.
One of the cross country team’s most exciting dress ups was to dress as their coaches. “We have three coaches [Ms. Monica Weir, Mr. Casey Hanson, and Mr. Jim Wander]. Usually, the junior high and freshman are Coach Weir, the sophomore and juniors are Coach Hanson, and the seniors are Coach Wander. They all have pretty distinct looks but the best is Wander. He always wears scrubs, a punny shirt, a bandana, and of course his Asics running shoes,” Tarnowski said.
The volleyball team dresses up as well, usually in their warmups. If someone decides not to dress up, punishments can vary. “Usually if someone doesn’t dress up we slightly haze them, but nothing too mean. One time we made people do push ups if they didn’t do it, but we decided that was too harsh,” senior volleyball captain Anna Carr said.
For the fall sports of 2017, dress up days were a success. People were drawn to the turf and the gym through this unique and fun way of celebrating game day. As fall sports come to an end and winter sports now begin, there are many more crazy dress ups to look forward to.
