Pep club returns to JHHS

Brandi (Brenner) Fritz remembers being a part of the pep club during her days as a Jackson Heights High School student — on Friday nights, regardless of the sport or where it was played, she said, the pep club was “the place to be.”

“Everyone cheered in it,” said Fritz, a 1996 JHHS alumna who now works as assistant board clerk in the Jackson Heights district office. “You wanted to be extremely loud and be heard. We didn't always have a bus to go to away games, but that didn't stop our student body from traveling to them, and we usually carpooled with groups of friends. The school spirit was so high.”

Fritz said she’s not sure when the pep club at JHHS was disbanded, but she believes it’s been “close to 20 years, if not more.” But when she joined JHHS Principal Derek Smith and a group of spirited students in a Nov. 3 bus trip to St. Marys for a football playoff game, it sparked memories of the old days and a desire to see the pep club return.

And this year, it’s making a comeback at JHHS as an official, extracurricular lettering activity.

“Brandi had a great idea and followed through to make it happen. All I did was say yes and drive a bus,” Smith said. “It’s a great idea, because the staff here at Jackson Heights has a lot of great ideas. I just get to be part of it.”

By making the rebooted JHHS Pep Club a lettering activity, Fritz said she wanted to recognize JHHS students who are not out for sports but still do their part to be “the backbone of the school spirit at games, showing the pride for their school by sitting in the bleachers and cheering on their schoolmates.” Plus, she said, making it a lettering activity would likely boost interest in the club.

Through the years, Fritz said, groups of students have shown up at home and away games to provide an extra boost of school spirit, helping the Cobra cheerleaders to pump up the crowds who come to cheer on Jackson Heights teams. Sometimes, though, those groups have been small, and that’s another part of why she wanted to see the Pep Club return to JHHS as a lettering activity.

“The Pep Club hopefully can help the cheerleaders with chants and cheers and just help the overall atmosphere at sporting events, bringing back the liveliness and thrill of being at a Friday night game,” she said.

Smith said he knew he would be all for bringing back the Pep Club when the enthusiastic response of JHHS students who rode the activity bus to the St. Marys football game jogged Fritz’s memories.

“We talked the whole way back from the game, and just listening to her reminisce about pep club when she was in school, along with talking to a lot of our alumni, we decided it was time to inject some pep back into our student section at games,” he said. “Brandi did all the leg work on this and has done a fabulous job. She dug through the old files and looked into how you used to letter in pep and put together the rules for the club.”

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