With a new year of school comes new students, new sports teams, and new leaders of the Bird Cage. Meet Jakob Cumins, Ben Redden, and Ethan Linhart, leaders of Academic Magnet’s student section, the Bird Cage. Formerly lead by Henry Flowers, the Bird Cage is known for being one of the greatest and loudest student sections in Charleston County. After kicking off the year with a 49-8 home victory over Lincoln, I sat down with our spirit leaders to find out more about what they had in store for this year.

Every home game, a theme is chosen to better unite the Bird Cage in color, outfit, and cheer. Our first game featured Hawaiian shirts and leis as the Bird Cage cheered on the Raptors to victory while decked out in colorful tropic prints. Ben and Jakob have some special themes planned for this year, one of their favorites being a Minion night. Honoring the always entertaining minions from Despicable Me, the Bird Cage will be united in overalls, yellow paint, and in true Minion fashion, a craving for bananas. In addition to the Bird Cage, Magnet’s Dirty Birds and cheerleaders are also key components to cheering on and supporting our teams. This year, all three groups have joined together and have plans to be even better and louder than before, and to cheer our Raptors on to victory.

The new leaders have kept much of the cheers from past years, but have added their own signature cheers to the collection. Much like Charlie Black’s patented Roller Coaster Cheer used to hype up the crowd, Ethan Linhart has created his own call and response cheer. Debuting for the first time against Military Magnet, Ethan paid tribute to the rap duo Rae Sremmund, using their song, Unlock the Swag, as inspiration. The video on Twitter even earned a retweet from Rae Sremmund and Swae Lee’s official Twitter accounts, and has spread all across the country, earning the Bird Cage fame nationwide. Check out the video here: https://twitter.com/tyeelinhart/status/640013181499256832

Make sure to come out and join the Bird Cage in support of our Raptors as we play Baptist Hill on September 18 at 7:30!