Friday night, a few hours before the football team takes the field. Most students are at home relaxing before heading out to the game. But in the parking lot of the school, there is a group of kids under a tent getting ready for the game. This year, a combination of boys and girls decided to organize two groups, “fraternity” Sigma Corn and “sorority” Delta Yeti, to tailgate in the parking lot of the school before the football games began.

“At tailgates we typically hangout, listen to music, play some corn hole, eat food and just try to get everyone excited,” Bryan Chac, senior and member  of Sigma Corn, said.

At the beginning of the year, a few of the senior boys had the idea to start Sigma Corn to try and have something fun to do before football games. After that, a group of girls decided to make a group of their own called Delta Yeti. Both groups met together and  tailgated in the parking lot on Fridays before the games started.

“There was a group of our friends who just said, ‘Hey who wants to go tailgate before the football games?’” Chac said. “There wasn’t really one specific person that came up with the idea. It was a team effort. We just thought that it would be cool to have something to do before the games.”

Since then, both the Sigma Corn and Delta Yeti groups and the tailgates have become much more popular throughout the student body. Both groups have their own Twitter accounts to get information about the times of the tailgates out to anyone who is interested. The Goonies also use their Twitter account to help get tailgate information out. Many people who aren’t technically in either group still went to their tailgates for something to do before games  started.

“I think that it is a good thing to have the groups tailgating before the football games,” Activities Director Mike Janes said. “I think that organized tailgating before every game is nice and is a good way to increase excitement.”

The groups continued to tailgate the rest of the football season and hope to continue through any winter or spring sports that they can find to tailgate at. They hope to keep bringing something extra and exciting to sporting events so that people can look forward to something as well as the usual excitement of the games.

“We are hoping to continue tailgating throughout the year,” Chac said. “We just don’t really know what events we would tailgate at yet because it is normally just a football thing. Tailgating during the winter would be hard because it’s cold and there aren’t any outdoor sports. We have pretty much just done football games but we will tailgate pretty much anything.”

Neither of the groups have main leaders and everyone normally brings their own food and activities to the tailgate. Typically the tailgates started two or three hours before the scheduled start time of the sporting event.

“I just think it’s going to continue to be a fun way to hang out with friends and hang out before the games,” Chac said. “It is a good way to get everyone excited and hyped up and get ready to support our team. I think it has really helped to get more people involved.”