Gold Rush

Campus spirit groups gather strength and momentum this season

By David Driver

The signs are everywhere.

At the end of Mason’s last basketball season, the Patriot Platoon student fan club had about 80 members. Now, there are more than 300, says James Meyer, director of tickets and promotions for Intercollegiate Athletics, who started the Platoon four seasons ago. The growing support for Patriot athletics has also injected new energy in the other spirit organizations on campus.

Even the cheerleaders are feeling the love.

“It is very exciting now that the whole community is behind us,” says cheerleading coach Ronnie Owen, BS ’99 and BSN ’05. Owen, in her second season as head coach, was a cheerleader in 1999 when the men’s team advanced to the NCAA tournament before losing to the University of Cincinnati. This season, she has 16 team members who lead cheers at men’s basketball games and another 24 cheerleaders used solely to energize the crowd for women’s hoop games.

“We are trying to spread [ourselves] around the Patriot Center,” says Owen, who is also a nurse at Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge, Virginia. “We want to increase crowd involvement during games, to get the crowd to yell with us rather than just watch. We have spent much of our time in practice concentrating on just this.”

Outside of cheering at basketball games, the cheerleaders compete nationally. For nine straight years, the team has been invited to the College Cheerleading and Dance Team National Championship, what has been tabbed the most prestigious college spirit event in the country. The coed team has placed in the top five for the past four years.

Michelle Chin, coach of the 16-member Masonettes Dance Team, saw an immediate increase in interest in her squad after the men’s Final Four run last spring. “I am continuing to get a lot more inquiries from juniors and seniors in high school,” says Chin, now in her fifth year as the dance team coach.

The Masonettes perform at all men’s home games and selected women’s home games and will be at both the Colonial Athletic Association men’s and women’s tournaments in March. The dance team also competes annually at Universal Dance Association’s National College Cheerleading and Dance Team Championship, held every January at Walt Disney World. They have placed in the top 10 of the nation’s best college dance teams every year for the past seven years.

And this year, for the first time ever, the Patriot Pep Band’s director is a full-time faculty member. In the past, the directors have been students.

“This is a logical move for a school of this size,” says Michael “Doc Nix” Nickens, the new pep band director. “It is an inevitable part of the college experience. It is a rallying point.” In addition to leading the pep band, Nickens will also teach two courses this spring.

Nickens made his first appearance with the band at Mason Midnight Madness in October. Not only does he bring style and enthusiasm to the position, but his academic credentials are sterling.

He graduated from West Potomac High School in Fairfax County and then earned a bachelor of music degree from the Manhattan School of Music with a tuba performance major and composition minor after transferring from James Madison University. He received a master’s of music from Yale University with a tuba performance major. This summer, Nickens received his doctor of music arts from the University of Michigan.

Nickens says, “When we are doing our job correctly, the band becomes part of the team, and the crowd becomes part of the band.”

To feel the love for yourself, come see the Patriots in action. Schedule and ticket information are available at goMason.com.