This week, the Review sat down with Silas Montgomery (OC ’13) and Andrew Wise (OC ’13), two alumni soccer players, to discuss their devotion to the team, how to heckle players and cheerleading.

How many Oberlin soccer games have you gone to this season?
Silas Montgomery: We’ve gone to every game we could go to. We went to every home game and drove to a couple others.

Andrew Wise: We drove to Wooster, we drove to two Kenyon games, Baldwin Wallace, Case Western; we wanted to go to Denison, but that didn’t work out.

SM: And now we’re going to Rochester.

Why?

AW: Because I like watching them. They’re like my family.

SM: Yeah, definitely. After every game, they’re always like, “Thank you so much for coming out.” And honestly, I love watching them play. As people and as players I want to support them.

AW: I feel like I’m still a part of it — even though I’m not on the team anymore — if I can be there to cheer for them.

What’s your favorite cheer to lead at games?

AW: Yeo Baby.

SM: It’s gotta be the Yeo Baby. It’s so nerve-wracking for me to do though. It’s really embarrassing — you yell a lot and put yourself out there. I can’t do it; it makes me very nervous.

AW: Everyone always joins in and it’s great.

What’s the most enthusiastic game you’ve attended?

SM: Our freshman year, I have these memories of there being huge crowds there. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

AW: For me, there would be the moments when I was playing in front of big crowds and one of my friends just had an “Andrew” chant that he did, where he would just yell “Andrew” a lot. He got the whole crowd to do it once. But this year, probably the game against Hiram. There were a lot of people there; there were a lot of Hiram parents. I got really mad at the referees.

SM: Yeah, we got in trouble. We had to stop picking on individual players because apparently you’re not allowed to do that. So dumb.

What’s your best heckling technique?

SM: Well, I pride myself on coming up with clever cheers. They aren’t necessarily mean — they’re not nice — but it’s more fun to yell something that makes people laugh and gets them out of the zone that way. One of my favorite ones I ever came up with, which no one laughed at, which made me pretty disappointed, was right after the movie “Looper” had come out with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Someone took a shot that was super high and “looped” over the goal, so I yelled, “Nice looper Joseph Gordon-Levitt!” and no one laughed. I thought it was great. I had to explain that one like four times.

AW: My favorite one that Silas has done was when we were at Wooster and the referee gave a yellow card to the wrong player when it should have gone to the captain.

SM: And, by the way, their colors are yellow and black.

AW: And so, Silas said something along the lines of, “Not very captain-like of you to let your other player take the yellow. Real Hufflepuff move, Wooster.”

SM: Yeah, I kept that one going for a while.

AW: I think [Head Coach] Blake [New] even turned around and laughed at that one.

You guys bring a drum and didgeridoo to the games. Where did those come from?

SM: Last year, we were with Josh Brancazio [OC ’12], who played on the soccer team with us, and we were in his apartment before a game and we were like, “We need to make some instruments!” So he found this recycling bucket and we put a bunch of tape around it and it turned into the best drum ever. The didgeridoo I got when I was helping Josh move out this summer and he didn’t want to take it with him. I didn’t want it, but he left it in his apartment so I had to take it.

AW: It’s become my weapon now.

SM: Yeah, we’ve put it to good use.

Have you come up with any new cheers?

AW: Well, we’ve made some personal cheers. One I really like is, instead of yelling, “Olé, olé, olé, olé,” we yell, “OSlade, OSlade, OSlade,” [for sophomore Slade Gottlieb]. We have the [sophomore] John [Ingham] cheer which is to the tune of “Shots.” It goes, “John, John, John, John” instead of “shots, shots, shots, shots.” John really liked it, and everything else has sort of fallen through.

There has been talk about getting a mascot to run around at games. How do you feel about that?

AW: I probably wouldn’t do it, but I would love it.

SM: That would be awesome. I’d be way too anxious to be a mascot. Mascots are awesome though, they just run around and dance.

AW: It’d have to be somebody who doesn’t care as much about the game.

SM: Yeah, we have to watch the entire game. We analyze the games a lot. It’s really hard not to play.

If the team wins both of its games this weekend and continues on in the NCAA tournament, how far are you willing to travel to watch them play?

SM: I’m willing to go as far as I can. I don’t mind driving. If we can get there, I’ll go there. We’re in a good situation because our boss [at Slow Train Cafe] will help us out with work. If we could go with the team to any state, I’d go.
Any last words?
SM: It’s not just us. There are so many people who love this team. Everyone who’s played on it feels some connection to it, and even friends of players have a connection to the team. When we went to the Kenyon game, so many people texted me and told me they were watching it via livestream. Now we’re going to New York, and there are some alumni, some of whom aren’t even ex-players, who are going to travel out there to watch it. This team’s really important to a lot of people, and supporting them is an incredible thing to be able to do.