Students looking for a cheering section to be a part of can look to the Red Riot, which has been revamped and reorganized after a takeover by new management.

The Northern Star sat down with Red Riot President Matthew Jockl to talk about the change and what’s to come.

Northern Star: When did you guys take over for the new Red Riot?

Matthew Jockl: We took over during the summer. Justin Kuryliw graduated and didn’t have anybody to pass it along to because it was pretty much just him running it. So he contacted me and I was able to start setting it up in more of an organization-type format and we’re hopefully going to be SA-approved to be an actual student organization this fall.

NS: What do you think was wrong with it before?

MJ: It didn’t have any organization to it. It was pretty much somebody running it out of their basement. One person trying to get everybody involved to go to sporting events; it’s kind of unrealistic to think you’re going to be able to cover all the sports as best as you can. We’re trying to put together a good solid team to really get people out there and get people to all of the games.

NS: What do you think the differences are now and what have you done so far?

MJ: We’ve been sending out mass e-mails to all of the members. We’ve been contacting all of the fraternities and sororities, trying to get them to go out to games. The game that we were at against Wisconsin sold out. We would like to think we had something to do with that.

NS: How big of a part do you think you had in getting that record crowd?

MJ: I think we had a pretty good portion. There was probably 30 or 40 people there and then there’s a ton of people that couldn’t even come down into the stadium that were up on the observation deck and those were a lot of Red Riot people too. We’re off to a pretty good start.

NS: What are your future plans with any other teams?

 

MJ: We’re going to be supporting basketball especially in the spring. We’re planning on doing a soccer game and then later in the spring we’re just going to play it by ear and see what dates are open and where we can fit games in for different sports. We would like to do a baseball game. It’s a kind of slow-paced game so you’re not going to get too many crazy cheers going, but we can definitely get people out to the games which is huge for our athletes.