“We are Loud and we are Proud,” is the mantra of the USU student-led organization the HURD. The group is responsible for providing a loud, fun, and passionate student section to all home athletic events.
Last year, the HURD reached a 132.9 on the decibel meter scale in their game against Nevada. Jalen Horace from the marketing committee and Ben Bardet, the operations director of the HURD, described the feeling of the crowd.
"Sometimes it feels like you can say whatever you want and not worry about it and just chew your heart out and say, you know, speak your mind and have as much school pride as you can possibly have without — you know, in high school, you're really limited in what you could say and do rowdy right?" Horace said. "And now that you're in college, it's do rowdy."
"I don't know if I can accurately describe it over word of mouth," Bardet said.
HURD takes another step of just being loud and rowdy, but makes it make the game much more personal.
“We have a specific group chat called HURD dirt," Bardet said. "And before every game, we'll send in just things that we find about people like we'll look up LinkedIns, we'll find their Venmos, we'll find their phone numbers, like their mom's name, their dog's name, whatever it may be about them that we can yell and scream at them to get their game off."
Adam Justin, the marketing communications director of the HURD, talked about how the HURD has helped out with the community.
"I was able to get a bunch of people to donate to the cash food bank for every single time the opposing coach complained," Justin said.
The HURD has been on a roll with breaking decibel and attendance records. It starts to come out of the dark shadows of rival schools such as Utah and BYU, and continues to grow.
"Whenever the team does well, lots of people say, ‘Hey, who are these guys?’ But we've been here the whole time," Horace said.
