ROTC Boom Crew Gets a Real Workout in 59-2 Montana Win

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Any fan, especially the North End Zone ‘Crazies’ at each Grizzly home football game, has become well acquainted with the ROTC ‘Boom Crew’, that not only fires off the cannon after each Grizzly touchdown but also do push-ups totaling up the score.

We’ll get back to that in a moment.

Lauren Sheehan, OIC (Officer in Charge) of the Boom Crew described her duties at each home game.

The ROTC Boom Crew is Made Up of Montana National Guard Cadets

“I am in charge of putting together a roster of cadets who are able to do the Boom Crew for the weekend,” began Sheehan. “I collect names and then ensure that everyone has met the push-up requirement for the games. And then we schedule a few rehearsals for the color guard if we are participating in color guard for that game.”

Sheehan described the protocol for shooting off the cannon after each Grizzly touchdown.

The Cannon Booms After Every Montana Grizzly Touchdown

“The seniors typically take charge of loading the cannon, but we like to have everyone standing around and as involved as they possibly can be,” she said. “We like to get the underclassmen some reps with it too, because it's a really fun thing to do. When it comes to shooting off the cannon, I know when I was a freshman, that was the coolest thing ever, and I still think it is, so I try to get the younger cadets up there first, so that they have the opportunity to shoot the cannon, and then the older cadets can go later in the game.”

Now, back to those push-ups.

The tradition, according to Sheehan, is for the crew to do the aggregate amount of push-ups totaling the Griz score.

Say, for instance, the Griz scored 8 touchdowns. That would be 7, then 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, then 56 push-ups, totaling 252!

Saturday's Score of 59 Points Would Have Meant Doing 252 Push-ups

I spoke to Sheehan about how the Boom crew handled the challenge of doing so many push-ups.

“We start with seven, and then 14, then 21, and we go all together,” began Sheehan. “Then once we hit the 30 range, we start to decide as a crew whether our push-ups were looking good enough for us to continue doing them together, or if we should break them up, and if we break them up, everyone will hold the push up position, and then each cadet will go down the line and do seven push-ups, and then the next cadet will do seven push-ups, and so on so forth, until we reach the total score.”

Sheehan said the Boom crew also interacts with the North End Zone fans at each game.

“We try to interact with the crowd as much as we can,” she said. “We like to get the program out there, and it's a smaller program, but we do a lot of great things, and we like to interact with the community, so when we can, we love to interact with the fans in the North End Zone, and then before the game, we like to walk the cannon through the tailgates and let fans stop to take pictures with it and have their little moment, too.”

The ROTC Boom Crew has been serving at Washington Grizzly Stadium since 1989.