My Rambling Road : YonkoJeon

I am a big sports fan. I was raised on American football and soccer. Every Sunday at my home we had the game on the TV all afternoon and then watched highlights from the other games that we had not watched. Since my birthday falls around the time of the Super bowl, I am used to being surrounded by fans and cheering for sporting events. I have played soccer and have attended many different types of sporting event imaginable growing up and have had many experiences with fans and the different types of cheering that they do while watching and supporting their teams. But I was not expecting the enthusiasm and passion that came from the cheerleaders and the audience members at both the baseball game on Friday and especially at the Soccer match that was on Saturday.

Ok, before I get in to my long monologue about how different the cheering styles are, let me divulge into a quick summery of what cheering culture means to me as a college student who hails from the South Eastern part of America. At baseball games, there is not much cheering, mostly what I have seen is that most of the audience members are sitting down and only really stand up to go get food or if there was a passionate play out on the pitch. Same with soccer and football games at my university. There is some standing up to cheer on a particularly interesting or good play, but most of the time people are sitting down in the stands and watching the game more than the cheerleaders or whatever is going on in the sidelines.

But not in Korea, or at least from what I saw at YonkoJeon. From the time that I entered the stadium to the end of the game (with the exception of a brief 15 minutes for the half time show) the other students and I did not sit down in our seats once for the whole entire game. We all were on our feet yelling and cheering our hearts out following our 10 leaders whole where dressed in frilly colorful outfits dancing up on platforms down by the fields. The cheerleaders did not stop bouncing and dancing for the whole game and did not once stop and turn around to watch the game that was going on behind them.

Sure they switched up the members on stage every once and a while. So times it was just the girls and sometimes the guys would be up there dancing a long to EXO’s Growl, but for the whole game they (and us students) did not stop cheering. At times, I even forgot there was a game going on down on the field. I was having too much fun singing and moving along with the huge crowd of blue that I was surrounded by in the stands.

And when I say cheering, what I really mean is dancing and swaying with the person next to you while you cheer and sing until you lose your voice. After two days of this non-stop cheering at the three games that I went to, I was so tired that I passed out around eight at night. I have no idea how the cheerleaders were able to last for all five games, dancing around in their high heeled boots (yes, even the guys had some lift in theirs) and leading the gigantic sea of students in front of them. And when Yonsei would get a point in the game, oh man, all hell would break loose; there was streamers, fireworks, confetti, big blow up dancing things, and smoke machines going full blast. And obviously there would be another round of singing and cheering, only this time even more louder , if that was even possible!

I had always thought that back in the states we were pretty supportive with our teams; there would be some cheering and celebrating during the game, but in reality now that I think about it, most of the cheering and comradely comes before and after the games in the form of tailgating and after parties, not really in the game itself. In fact I think that that is the only things that I think we Americans are a little better at. We actually watch the games and put our full attention into what is going on the field. At some points in all three games, I had to remind myself to actually watch the game and focus on what the players were doing rather than cheer with the other people in the stands.

But the feeling on unity that was in the stands was unreal. Everyone was together, cheering the same cheers and doing the same motions; it was so surreal. Added to the fact that Korea University was doing the same thing to different cheers, it really was like two oceans were meeting in voice and motion in the stands. Truthfully out cheering the other school was almost as important, if more so, than the game that was being played out on the field.