Softball: Will the cheering (stories) ever stop?
The Viewmont softball team has perfected the art of cheering. This realization came to me when I noticed the Vikings in the dugout with their arms and faces pressed against the fence that separated them from the field, yelling out the first name of arguably their best player -- junior Shelbi Tyteca.
It was the most amazingly annoying cheer I've ever heard. The first time I heard it, I was sitting with the Fremont crowd, watching the Silver Wolves trying to squeeze out their most important win of the season against Viewmont on Tuesday afternoon. I turned to a Fremont fan and asked him, "What are they saying?"
"I don't know," he said. "They're just making noise."
The next time Tyteca went to the plate, I was able to break down the cheer. The Vikings were chanting, "Shell-Bee! Shell-Bee!" But this wasn't a simple shout, judging by the shocked looks on the faces of the Fremont fans, as if they were thinking, "What the heck?"
Besides attending a Viewmont game, the best way to understand how the cheer goes is to imagine seagulls saying it, with one group screaming out "Shell!" and the other belching out "Bee!" as it is repeated about 10 times.
Maybe I'm spending too much time writing about softball cheers, like the readers who suggested in the comments they left about an article I wrote on this aspect of the sport. Most readers accused The Tribune of wasting time and space when the newspaper should use it for a feature on a star player or two.
The thing is, we profile prep athletes so often that we just had to do something different, something fun -- just like how the Vikings could have easily told Shelbi Tyteca these simple, though always inspiring, words, "Go Shelbi!"
These kinds of cheers are the stuff high school athletes will remember long after they turn in their uniform for the last time. When I heard the Shelbi Tyteca chant, it made me happy knowing that some people can't help but support their teammate, even if they sound like seagulls.
-- Chhun Sun
It was the most amazingly annoying cheer I've ever heard. The first time I heard it, I was sitting with the Fremont crowd, watching the Silver Wolves trying to squeeze out their most important win of the season against Viewmont on Tuesday afternoon. I turned to a Fremont fan and asked him, "What are they saying?"
"I don't know," he said. "They're just making noise."
The next time Tyteca went to the plate, I was able to break down the cheer. The Vikings were chanting, "Shell-Bee! Shell-Bee!" But this wasn't a simple shout, judging by the shocked looks on the faces of the Fremont fans, as if they were thinking, "What the heck?"
Besides attending a Viewmont game, the best way to understand how the cheer goes is to imagine seagulls saying it, with one group screaming out "Shell!" and the other belching out "Bee!" as it is repeated about 10 times.
Maybe I'm spending too much time writing about softball cheers, like the readers who suggested in the comments they left about an article I wrote on this aspect of the sport. Most readers accused The Tribune of wasting time and space when the newspaper should use it for a feature on a star player or two.
The thing is, we profile prep athletes so often that we just had to do something different, something fun -- just like how the Vikings could have easily told Shelbi Tyteca these simple, though always inspiring, words, "Go Shelbi!"
These kinds of cheers are the stuff high school athletes will remember long after they turn in their uniform for the last time. When I heard the Shelbi Tyteca chant, it made me happy knowing that some people can't help but support their teammate, even if they sound like seagulls.
-- Chhun Sun
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