By Kimiko L. Martinez
Assistant News Editor
Cross-dressing male cheerleaders and a handful of spirit-filled cohorts stormed down dorm hallways Thursday evening in an attempt to get the Pepperdine campus ready for Friday’s highly anticipated game against West Coast Conference rival Gonzaga.
Starting at the Upsilon parking lot with stereos blasting from several vehicles, the band of spirit-spreaders ran screaming through the hallways, pulling students from their rooms and encouraging onlookers to join the pre-game, let’s-get-pumped party.
“We had to do something,” said Giuseppe Nespoli, Student Government Association sophomore senator, referring to the preparations for the next night’s game. “We hardly ever get everyone together and get everyone riled up. We had a lot of people uniting for a common goal.”
The goal? To kick Gonzaga’s butt.
Just a few weeks ago basketball head coach Paul Westphal had urged students at Convocation to support the team by attending the home game and providing an energetic atmosphere for the players. The Dorm Road Spirit Rally attempted to make sure students were ready to make that happen.
“People sometimes get tickets to the game but don’t go,” SGA Vice Pres-ident Ben Elliott said. “I think this made it clear that this was a big game. We were going to have fun and beat Gonzaga. And we did.”
Elliott and three sophomore SGA members quickly organized the affair just a day before to assure the energy would be at a premium level the next night.
“We threw it together in two days,” Elliott said. “We got the word out and people showed up. It was a great event.”
Originally scheduled for 11 p.m. Thursday night, the rally’s time was moved to 9:30 p.m. in response to faculty concerns regarding wild behavior and noise issues, according to Nespoli.
But regardless of the time change, the SGA organizers considered the event a success, corralling about 300 students to near Dorm 17 to chow down on Taco Bell and Pizza Hut after the Dorm Storm.
“We started out with about three cars,” Nespoli said, “and ended up with about seven or eight, piling people in the backs of trucks and making our way around the entire dorm loop.”
Although Nespoli’s unsure if it was the rally, a general excitement already present on campus or that day’s Graphic article about who was “the best in the West,” Nespoli said he thought everyone was ready for the big game.
And due to the unexpectedly good turnout (they had only anticipated somewhere around 100 attendees for the event), Nespoli advises students to “be prepared for bigger and better things, now that we know what we can do to get people going.”
Elliott agrees that there similar spirited events will follow.
“We’re planning on doing more spirit stuff,” Elliott said. “We’ll probably do one as it gets closer to March Madness.”
January 24, 2002