Over the course of last year and especially this year, members of the Big Game Club have created a new emphasis on the way members encourage student involvement. The main purpose of the club is to promote school sporting events and try and get as many students to come to the game and get involved as possible. Deion Ziwawo, Big Game president and senior, said he has seen the club’s involvement falter in recent years, but he said he believes the club has been really focusing on that goal this school year.

“With this new group of leaders, we have been really focusing on improving our student section and trying to make it the biggest its ever been. We’ve seen in years past how student sections have been big and live and we really want to bring that back,” Ziwawo said.

In order to accomplish these goals, especially for the upcoming winter sports season, Ziwawo said the club members have some smaller tasks they want to accomplish in order to get to some of their larger, long-term goals.

“We have different goals for each season so, for example, for this upcoming basketball season one of our main goals is that we want to have a basketball tailgate. Right now, tailgates have been by far our biggest thing,” Ziwawo said.

Mia Glass, Big Game vice president and senior, said she agrees with Ziwawo about themes.

“Our goal for each game is to think of a good theme that would draw people to come to the games and to get people from all grades to promote it. So far, for the upcoming winter sports we have all of the themes planned as well as for the tailgates,” Glass said.

According to Ziwawo, the club plans to introduce some new ways to encourage students to come out to the games and get involved during the winter sports season as well as those following. In addition to the tailgates, Ziwawo said the club will focus on themes as one of the methods.

“We’re going to have some new student section themes some of you guys have not seen before and overall just bringing up some more hypeness,” Ziwawo said.

Club co-sponsor Erin Modisett said she thinks this renewed focus for the club will help.

“We’re trying to get everyone involved and bring up the school spirit,” she said. “Our committee is doing a great job promoting these events.”

To help increase awareness for the games, tailgates and themes, Ziwawo said the club has now been using social media and the Remind app more than ever.

He said, “We have (some) ongoing (notifications); that way students can always have access to alerts that we send and we use our twitter and Instagram very, very heavily. With (notifications) we can always send out random alerts like, ‘Game tonight, theme is this, come out show out.’ Since so many students use (social media), it’s the best way to throw out information.”

No matter what the club decides to do, Ziwawo said he believes the club will always strive toward increasing student involvement and participation with the hope of increasing overall school spirit.

“As of late, student participation in not just student section stuff but student participation in general has been low,” Ziwawo said, “so one of our main goals is to get the Greyhound Nation to be as powerful as it once was.”