Alabama high school softball: What goes into the perfect dugout chant, we asked the experts
"If she don't want it, we don't want it"
"Sit on it"
"That ball was high-igh-gh"
If you've spent any amount of time around a softball game, you've most likely heard at least one of these chants coming from the dugout. Dugout chants and softball have become synonomous and nowhere is that more shown than the AHSAA softball regionals, but how do teams create and know when to use these chants?
The Gadsden Times asked a few of the experts — team chant leaders and creators — during the tournament and found out. By this point of the season, the chants have become refined and they know when to pull out each chant. That doesn't mean teams didn't put the work in early on, with teams such as West End creating a full list of chants and when to use them.
Multiple teams in the area take time to practice. Ahead of regionals Hokes Bluff went to get ice cream as a team and practiced chants, just another of the many ways teams have nailed down their chants.
"Writing them down, we had a paper and we made it during school and we had this long paper of cheers and bring it to the games," West End's Josie Bunch said.
Every team has at least one person — whether official or unofficial — that leads the cheers. They may not make up all the cheers but they lead them in the dugout. There are two main characteristics of the cheer leader, they are usually the loudest one on the team and they have an upbeat personality, that they try to help radiate to their teammates.
"Also I'm not that negative," Hokes Bluff's Rylee Hill said. "Typically my team, if something bad happens its like that, got to stay up the whole time."
With the rise of the social media platforms such as TikTok, teams have a new way to find cheers, as plenty of the area teams utilize it. Some will use cheers they find there while others modify them based on players or numbers on their team. With TikTok reaching across the country it has given new opportunities to find new chants, but there's also always word of mouth to find new chants.
"So most of our dugout chants are year to year, so we reuse some. Some have come off TikTok. We know as a team, we have chemistry so when a pitcher throws a bad pitch we know how to get in their head a little bit with a chant," Boaz's Harley Wyatt said. "A lot of teams around our area have a TikTok page and they do so much, and just around the country so we see a lot of different stuff on TikTok."
However a team finds a chant, what it says or when it’s used there’s a common theme: encouraging and cheering on your team.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: What goes into the perfect softball dugout chant, we asked the experts
