For 50 years, Glenbrook South has been “washing” other schools’ teams “in the river” and cheering their own teams on to victory.  From the “Titancrumble” to the new “South!” cheer made up this year, the spirit continues to evolve.  Whether it’s acrainy Friday night football game or a soccer game far away, the Titans keep up their spirit and always “bleed blue and gold”.  However, GBS couldn’t have kept this amazing spirit up for 50 years without the direction from a certain group of people: Pep Club.

Jim Shellard, student activities director, said the Pep Club this year
means a lot since it is the 50th year.

“[Pep club leaders] really stepped up to the challenge because I
think Pep Club this year has more spirit and more members than in my recent
memories,” he said.

The current Pep Club agrees and thinks that the school has come a long
way and the spirit continues to gets better.

Abby Keller, senior Pep Club leader, said she loves being the person
that everyone looks to during the football games for cheers.

“I think we’ve been doing a pretty decent job this year getting
everyone minds set that it’s ‘mandatory’ to come to all the games and
cheer,” Keller said. “It’s a great feeling being able to be the one
to get the crowd into the game.”

Troy Farsakian, senior Pep Club
leader, agreed, explaining he loves how much the get into the game.

“My favorite part about being a pep club leader is […] the
energy and emotion.  It’s a lot of fun,
we really get into it,” he said.

The Pep Club leaders have meetings on Wednesday mornings to discuss new
cheers and events for the week.  Then on
Friday, they meet with the whole club to practice cheers and plan for upcoming
games.  Anyone is welcome to join
throughout the school year and according to the leaders, the more the
better.

Farsakian said that this year, Pep Club has been trying new tactics to
motivate more people to go to the games.

“[Our job] is to show up to all the sporting events and maybe even
non-sporting events we haven’t tried that yet,” he said.  “It is our responsibility to support our
Titans.”

Senior leader Keeley Nolan said she loves how much school spirit the
school has.

“It’s so much fun and I love losing my voice every single
game,” she said with a raspy voice from the previous games.  “You want to be the person that makes
the other people cheer […] you want to get chills from them.”

According to the leaders, some other new things they’ve been doing are
handing out glow sticks, rally towels and coming up with new cheers to keep the
fans spirit and energy high.

“At the football games we have a really good time,” Farsakian
said. “It’s just a lot of energy with the crowd [shouting] back to
us.  We try to match that [energy] every
time.”

While these four leaders try to hit up as many games as they can, there
are still about eight other senior leaders that try to make it to the games to
help them cheer on the Titans.

Jen Fox, senior leader said she tries to join with the other main
leaders and attend as many events as possible.

“The environment and atmosphere of everybody is my favorite,”
Fox said about the club.  “How we
can all come together as one school and just root for everybody and support
them in all their sports.”

While the seniors are the main leaders of Pep Club, the rest of the
classes have a big impact on it as well.
Junior Molly McDonagh hopes to be a leader next year and has been trying
hard to be a good junior leader.

“[As a junior] our job is to go to as many events as you can and
encourage as many juniors to go and cheer,” McDonagh said. “Also to
show the freshman what Pep Club is.”

According to Keller, most of the leaders agree that it is a tough job
but it is worth it.

“Some people in this school don’t always have the best school spirit
but me and the fellow leaders have to change that,” Keller said.

McDonagh agrees with Shellard and thinks the leaders are doing a great
job keeping the spirit high for the 50th year.

“This year for Pep Club they tried to get as many people as they
could to come out and be part of the 50th,” McDonagh said.  “More kids than usual came out to the
big events [this year].”

The leaders also have to get pumped during school.  Keller said she definitely has fun on
“blue and gold Fridays”.

“My hope is that they will remember [Pep Club] fondly,”
Shellard said.  “The can reflect
back and say, ‘Hey, we were a part of something bigger than us,’ because they
were a part of the 50th and they stepped up their game and represented the
school well.”

Nolan said she wants to learn from the previous years and leave her
mark for the years to come.

“I want to impress all the alumni,” Nolan said. “I want
them to look back on this school […] and have them be like wow this school
really has come a long way.  And when I’m
an alumni I want to look back and see the same thing to know that I left an
impact.”