The Bryant Hornet Football team has won five state championships in a row, and with those victories comes enthusiasm from the student section. This enthusiasm is what earned Bryant Swarm, the group that guides the student section, their first place ranking of Arkansas Student Sections for the 2022-2023 school year.

With the release from studentsectionreport.org, the Bryant Swarm is looking to maintain the first place spot for the 2023-2024 school year.

The swarm sponsor, Cristina Dover, is a key piece in leading Swarm, who then leads the student section.

“Swarm kind of brings in the creativity so that the student section is united,” Dover said. “So everyone is on the same page and on the same theme.”

Senior swarm officer Hayden Hunter agrees that Swarm was a major part in the contribution to the student section’s achievement.

“Swarm is just like the embodiment of the student section.” Hunter said.

According to the Student Section Report, the different themes selected by Swarm for the student section to dress up as played a role in the decision of giving Bryant Swarm first place. Many different students enjoy dressing out to these themes.

“The thing I enjoy the most [about dressing out] is just seeing everyone else do it,” Hunter said. “Seeing the participation, you know, everyone coming together.”

Junior swarm officer, Dylan Middleton, also enjoys dressing out to the different game themes.

“I just find it fun to like, come to school dressed up as something different than this normal, everyday outfit,” Middleton said. “I feel like it promotes our school spirit and our school pride.”

Senior Aidan Fisher also enjoys dressing up to the pep rally themes that Swarm creates.

“I love how everybody gets to individualize their personalities and their outfits,” Fisher said.  “You can really  go all out or you can make it cute. Everybody has different ways they dress up and it’s really cool to see everybody’s passion.” 

Not only does the student section find dressing up for the different game themes fun, but they also enjoy having pep rallies.

“[Pep rallies] just gets everybody excited about it and knows about it, and so everyone wants to come.” Sophomore Maci Tharp, a swarm officer, said.

Fans also believe that the pep rallies and game themes have an effect on the outcome of the football games.

“It really, kind of, boosts [the football players’] ego and hypes them up,” Fisher said. 

According to the Student Section Reort,  Bryant Swarm also knows how to bring in numbers to the football games.

“Our student section just looks the biggest and sounds the loudest,” Senior swarm officer Camille Slack said.

The different swarm officers and those who participate believe that Bryant will be able to maintain their number one rank, but there will need to be some minor improvements, such as the reaction to the loss of the Parkview game on September 8th.

“I don’t think it will affect the ranking, but I will say I am pretty disappointed in how we reacted,”  Fisher said. “Just because we lost doesn’t mean we should have mellowed down. I think we should have really kept it going because that is part of a student section—to help the football team do better.” 

Whether the loss affects the future ranking or not, the students believe that Bryant will be able to hold their spot and recover.

“I think [the loss] affected the student section, of course, because I know you hate to see the team lose,” Middleton said. “But I think that the student section will come out most, especially as we get to our higher conference games like Jonesboro [and] Conway. That’s the point where we really need more support.”

Besides the Parkview game, the students believe Bryant just needs to keep doing what they’ve been doing in order to maintain their rank.

“Our students have to show up, that’s all they have to do,” Middleton said. “Show up and dress out, and we just get loud, that’s all we have to do.”

Hunter strongly believes that Swarm will be able to maintain their rank even better than they did last year; he wants to take what they achieved last year and bring it up a notch.

“I think we’ve been spoiled up to this point, not losing since October 2018, but you know it just shows we’re gonna have to come harder, we’re gonna have to win harder, we’re gonna have to fight back,” Hunter said. “After being spoiled that long and then finally getting punched back in the face, we’re gonna have to get back up and show them what we actually can do.”