Sitting on the bench during the soccer game against Niles West, senior Simon Maplet heard his name from the stands. The Ultras, a group of seniors, had begun chanting for him to get in the game. Shortly after this happened, a coach put Maplet in, and he scored his first goal of the season.

“People would chant my name to get in [the game], and then for me to score after they do that, it was definitely eventful, meaningful, especially with a big crowd there,” said Maplet. “So I’d say a big highlight of the season [was] scoring with all those people around and giving the fans what they wanted.”

According to senior Zachary Len, the Ultras is a student group that brings support to as many Glenbrook North sporting events as possible by creating dress up themes, cheering loudly, waving a flag, wearing custom Ultras jerseys, bringing a boombox speaker and getting the crowd going.

“Our overall goal is just to get more student body at every game [and] give more support to the teams that aren’t supported as much as they should be,” Len said.

The Ultras was inspired by the energy of seniors they saw at GBN soccer games last year, and now they try to bring that energy to a wider variety of sports such as field hockey, volleyball and flag football, Len said.

According to senior Sam Epstein, when he and the other Ultras all played on varsity teams their junior year, they expected to have a big crowd and great energy, but that was not the case for most games.

“The thing that lit the fire was that we wanted to have that crowd for GBN sports,” said Epstein. “We wanted to have that energy because that’s what high school sports should be, in our opinion. It should be exciting. It should be fun for everyone.”

“[We] were like,‘Okay, let’s make this a real thing, let’s make an Instagram, let’s make a group chat, let’s actually make this a serious thing and not just a thought,’” said Epstein. “And then after that, it just took off.” 

The Ultras try to attend both home and away games, such as a football game an hour drive away against Grant Community High School in Fox Lake, Ill., where they were the only GBN students in the student section. 

“I think that away games are when teams need your support the most because they’re walking into a really loud environment that’s not cheering for them,” senior Jack Dawson said.

According to Epstein, “It’s if you want to be at a game, if you want to bring excitement, [then] you can be an Ultra. It’s not exclusive at all.”

The Ultras is unaffiliated with GBN and is not an official club.

“Roughly, we have probably 20 committed people who will go to any game in [a moment’s] notice,” said senior Jayce Junkmann. “But we’ve had groups way larger than that at plenty of games.”

We want to create a legacy and pass the Ultras down to current juniors, Junkmann said.

According to Epstein, “It’s definitely not an easy task to get a group of guys committed to something like this, but I mean, we’d love to [pass the group down]. We’d love to make this a thing that continues to grow and continues to build even after we graduate.”