MA’s student section has been good this year… mostly

Over the summer of 2025, Jessa Anderson, David Hoffner, and Derrick Swanson met up and made a plan to boost the positivity and attendance at spotting events.

They worked hard, and Swanson came up with the idea to order red and black striped overalls (seen in the photo to the right). The group called the fall season’s ALT (Minnehaha’s Athletic Leadership Track) captains out of class on the intercom system and surprised them with the overalls rolled up with their names written on them and tied with a bow.

“We kind of thought we were just gonna hand them, and they were gonna get excited, but they all just started putting them on, which was super fun,” said Anderson.

In past years at Minnehaha, student attendance at sporting events has been low; this year, things are looking up.

This fall, M.A. has seen many students showing up to cheer on Redhawk athletics.

Support from all ages

Eva Affeldt, a Minnehaha sophomore, has been one of the leaders of the student section this year. For Minnehaha, this is very rare; usually, the leaders of the student sections are seniors, but Affeldt has altered this trend.

“I think that it’s a really fun atmosphere, and I love being around my friends and being able to lead it,” said Affeldt.

Addison Bergstrom, a sophomore on the Redhawks girls’ volleyball team, said that strong student support made a difference to her and the team, which won the Independent Metro Athletic Conference (IMAC) title.

“Having the student section helps bring intensity to our games,” said Bergstrom. “It also helps put extra pressure on the opponent as well.”

Minnehaha’s long-time athletic director, Josh Thurow, believes the first element of being a great fan is showing up.

“[Attendance] is really sticking out as being outstanding recently,” said Thurow. “I think it’s been tremendous. We’ve got a lot more people showing up. It seems like our athletic events are the place to be.”

For Thurow, this season brings back memories of great seasons in the past, when student leaders truly made a difference.

A couple of years ago, Trent Page (‘24), a football player, and Amina Allen (‘25), a basketball player, showed up to cheer on the girls’ volleyball team. The team had a streak of losing to Mounds Park Academy that year.

“They were really, really good,” said Thurow.

That night, Page and Allen led the student section.

“It wasn’t as big as what we’ve been getting,” Thurow said, “but it was a loud student section, all sorts of positive cheers.”

Every time the momentum of the team grew, the students grew louder.

“I think it really affected the play of our kids positively and impacted them to get their minds off the game,” said Thurow. “The Mounds Park kids were more worried about what our student section was doing than what they should be focused on.”

Thurow thinks the Redhawks won that night because of the loud student section, which he believes affected the game and the athletes.

Scott Scholl, who has been teaching math at the Upper School for more than 30 years and for most of that time has been involved with coaching football, basketball, and track and field, recalled another fun season.

“We had a really good [girls basketball] team in 1999-2000,” he said. “We had a group of students who called themselves the Redhawk Rowdies, and they’re much like our fans today, but their thing was to go out there and get rowdy, get loud. They were awesome.”

Teammates and rivals

A unique fact about the IMAC (Minnehaha’s conference) is that schools are opponents in most sports but teammates in a few. For football, Minnehaha co-ops with Saint Paul Academy (SPA), Blake, and non-IMAC Hope Academy to form the SMB Wolfpack. For players, the co-op seems to result in true cooperation.

Throughout her four years of managing for the Wolfpack, senior Ruby Brown has witnessed both the positive team dynamics of the team’s players and coaches, as well as the sometimes negative dynamics of the student section at SMB games.

“I think that for the most part [at SMB practice], the schools get along pretty well, but I think that there is some joking,” said Brown. “People poke fun at the other schools if there was a certain game like an SPA-Minnehaha soccer game or a Blake-Minnehaha volleyball game.”

At many high-school sporting events, one school’s chants can be so loud that the other school’s students yell back.

This year, Minnehaha’s loud fans have exchanged yell chants back and forth with other fans, including Blake fans at Wolfpack games. The intensity rises when the schools oppose each other in another sport.

There was an incident on Sept. 10, the Minnehaha student section was targeting a Blake player who was formerly dating a Minnehaha alum who graduated last year. Thurow was made aware of this after the fact and did his best to address it.

“At first, I didn’t realize what was being chanted, but evidently, we’re saying the name of a boy who graduated from here who was dating a Blake girl,” Thurow said, “I made apologies behind the scenes to that family, to the athletic directors from the opposing school, and then I had conversations with some of our student leaders who were taking part of that and and they’ve since corrected and welcomed the corrections.”

On Sept. 29, at another Blake versus Minnehaha volleyball game this year, the Minnehaha volleyball team played at Blake; the outcome would have a major impact on which team would win the conference. Minnehaha had an unusually large and loud fan section for an away game, and the Redhawks won 3-0.

At times, the “cheering” got ugly.

“I was at that game. It started really intensely between the players,” said Affeldt. “The dynamics were very intense and aggressive, with almost all of the chants we threw at them, they threw back at us.”

Social media

Social media right now has affected student sections and school rivalries tremendously.

Before social media, students from rival schools didn’t know as much about each other, even down to the details of who was dating whom. Social media also seems to lower the bar on behavior.

Often, people can say just about anything online with there being little to no consequences.

“Both Blake and Minnehaha barstools are run anonymously, so everything that is said on them can’t really be traced back to anyone,” said Affeldt.

Brown agrees with Affeldt.

“I know a fair amount about Blake volleyball,” said Brown. “They once posted a story on Instagram that said, ‘Tonight’s theme is Redhawk hunt’ or something like that. I feel like it’s not necessarily stemmed from social media, but I think it’s magnified by social media.”

Blake’s theme was ‘Redhawk Hunt,’ meaning they wanted to beat Minnehaha. After the Sept. 29 volleyball game, a hate page was made on social media, making fun of a Minnehaha student.

“I think what really led the other team to make the hate page is because when somebody insults you, and you don’t want to ‘let that slide,’ you have to insult them back,” said Affeldt.

Josh Thurow has a unique set of qualifications as athletic director.

Are fans getting worse?

Not only was he a high-school and college athlete, but he also coached for many years, and he has many years of experience as a high-school and college referee.

“I would say fans, interactions with referees and opposing teams, have gotten more negative over time,” said Thurow, “While I love our student section, they struggle to cheer for us. They have no problem finding somebody on the other team to pick on or cheer against.”

Other long-term observers, such as Scott Scholl, have seen the different trends come and go over the past three decades.

“Some years it’s a better spirit,” he said. “Some years, it’s not as much.”

Parent behavior

Parent behavior might not be as much of a problem for affecting athletes during the game, but it still can play a part.

Along with the MLI (Minnehaha Leadership Institute) director, Jessa Anderson is a mom of a Minnehaha senior who is involved in sports. Coming from both sides of being a parent as well as being a staff member at the school, she can speak to a lot of parent behavior based on what she has observed.

“I think that for the most part, at least in the spaces I’ve been in, parents have had pretty good attitudes and have been respectful and many good examples,” said Anderson, “I’ve heard different in some other schools…I know there was a situation this past year with soccer where there was another team, another school, that was being encouraged to represent in not the greatest light, and encouraged by parents and coaches to keep doing that, which I think is wild, because I just don’t think that anybody from our school, parents, or students would do that.”

A Christian school

Minnehaha is the #1 Christian school in Minnesota, and our athletic director hopes we can honor that title with our students’ behavior.

“Our language has to be upholding. The standard of what our school is in the student section,” said Thurow, “Now that doesn’t mean we can’t come and provide a home court advantage at our place when we’re here. So kids should continue to be loud, they should just be positive, and they will be great. And I think I’ve seen a lot of that this year.”

Heading into winter

Ask anyone involved in Redhawks sports: they love the support; it’s important to athletes that their classmates show up to games.

Minnehaha senior Sinae Hill has recently committed to play basketball at the University of Chattanooga in Tennessee, and wants M.A. students to bring lots of energy for her last season of high school basketball.

“We are going to be such a fun team this year,” said Hill. “People are going to want to be a part of that.”

With the winter sports season underway and the spring season approaching, school spirit is a huge way for students to support their fellow Redhawks and help them make a successful run in the playoffs.

“No matter what,” said Thurow, “it’s a great way to show that you love your school and that you’re invested in it – that you care about your classmates.”