Vandal women’s volleyball was back in Memorial Gym for their first home game of the Big Sky Conference on Thursday night.
Despite their 3-0 loss to the Portland State Vikings, Vandals weren’t down for the count, even when someone kept counting.
A Vandal player would step to the back of the court to serve. They would dip down and bounce the volleyball against the gym floor. The ball’s rhythmic thump would then be flooded out by shouts as someone from the opposing team yelled out how many times they’d dribbled. Then around the sixth dribble came someone screaming out like a buzzer.
Viking players on the sidelines started the trend, as they would yell out when a Vandal was up to serve.
But then, several fans adorned in yellow hard hats waving a Vandals’ flag decided to mimic it ten-fold.
“I guess we’re just kind of a little bit louder,” said Joel Jameson a Vandal fan who cheered from the stands.
The yellow hard hats that Jameson and his compatriots wore, he said, were based on an idea of the Buffalo Bills fan base, called the Bills Mafia. Jameson and his brother had thought up the idea to make their own “Vandal Mafia” using some hard hats they had gotten working on asphalt crews in the summer. They painted them yellow and covered them in stickers from the Pitman Center.
The counting, though, wasn’t as clear-cut.
“We just tried to yell out the count to, I guess, be a nuisance,” Jameson said laughing.
Whatever the Vikings would say to get under the other team’s skin, Jameson and his friends would come up with a retort back. Jameson said their idea was just meant to hype up the game, get fans active in the stands and support their team.
Coach Debbie Buchanan said the Vikings’ animated cries weren’t at all uncommon coming out of the pandemic, as college athletics of all kinds were unable to see fans during last year’s height in the pandemic.
“Teams had to create their own energy, and that’s all we had,” Buchanan said.
Buchanan said the shouts didn’t affect the Vandals, and they kept good energy throughout the game. She attributed the night’s loss to execution, and in part to some troubles from COVID-19.
Earlier in September, Vandals traveled to Denver to compete in the Thin Air Challenge’s three nonconference matches. However, many players suddenly became ineligible to play due to COVID-19 protocols, and the matches were canceled.
Practice following the cancellations sometimes only saw seven players, Buchanan said, and not all players had been able to meet return-to-play protocols.
But Thursday night’s match was the first in three weeks to see the entire volleyball roster return to play. It was also the first game to feature volleyball’s own Vandal Mafia.
“No one wants to be playing with no crowd,” Jameson said. “It’s always nice to have people cheer for you and have your back.”
Cody Roberts can be reached [email protected] or on Twitter @CodyRobReports