The Cheerleaders' Jam Session

#530 / Flood Time Capsule: 2002

Marshall University’s Homecoming 2002 found The Flood tailgating with friends under a large tent in a field near the football stadium.

The event was part of a fundraiser for the Matt Mathews Big Green Scholarship Fund set up in the name of one of Floodster Sam St. Clair’s old friends who had died a few years earlier from complications of a car wreck.

Folks in Huntington already knew about the fund, because a year earlier Ernie Salvatore, The Herald-Dispatch’s acclaimed sports editor, had announced the launch of the effort in his column.

“Many of us know who Frank E. “Matt” Mathews was,” Ernie wrote, “a former golden boy who spent the rest of his short life confined to a wheelchair as a paraplegic rooting for Marshall.” Matt, who died in July 2000 at age 33, was retired 2nd lieutenant with the U. S. Army. He is buried in Spring Hill Cemetery.

Salvatore noted that the event, hosted by Matt’s parents, Frank and Jewel, was meant to established the $30,000 fund.

The Gig

“Going into this freebie, I didn’t have very high expectation,” Charlie Bowen told his mom in an email the next day, “because the weather sounded like it was going to be dreadful, but actually it worked out. And we had fun.”

Four Floodsters were on hand for the job — Charlie and Sam, Dave Peyton and Chuck Romine — all using little battery-powered amps for a sound system, which worked fine for this little gig, three 30-minute sets with breaks in between.

The listeners were appreciative “and we sold more than $100 worth of CDs, which we donated to the cause,” Charlie wrote in his email.

Cheerleaders

The highlight of the afternoon came when the squad of Marshall cheerleaders came by to hear the music.

“Sam, who’s always thinking, quickly fetched the bag of kazoos we keep on hand and started passing them out to the young ladies,” Charlie noted, “and then we launched into ‘Rag Mama/Gimme Dat Ding’ and had the cheerleaders playing along on their new kazoos. What a hoot!”

The guys let the ladies keep the kazoos, much to Peyton’s dismay.

“Geez,” he’d say with a grin, “we coulda made Big Bucks selling kazoos that were pre-hummed by cheerleaders!”

The Game

The cheering squad would quite a busy day. Marshall’s Thundering Herd, led by Bob Pruett in his 7th year of coaching at the university, absolutely rolled over Troy State 24-7. 

Pruett went on to lead Marshall to an 11–2 record and a Mid-American Conference championship that season.

And, from The Flood’s perspective, even the weather cooperated; the guys had finished playing and were heading home before the afternoon rains began to pour down.