Justin Wand nervously walked through Athens on Jan. 15. He was headed to The Convo for the Ohio basketball game, but basketball was the last thing on his mind.
Wand is the student leader of “D-Lo’s Crew,” a group built to reinvigorate the slumping “O Zone” student section, but the pressure finally hit him. He was worried that more than two months of promotional efforts toward growing D-Lo’s Crew would fail — and if no one showed up to the first game, well, yikes.
“This is a big deal. This needs to work,” Wand said. “I’m going to be nervous no matter what happens until I get there and see the turnout.”
Nearly two weeks after 70 or so students attended the debut of D-Lo’s Crew, Wand is no longer anxious. The plans he made with the Ohio Athletic Department to instill a raucous student section back into The Convo have worked to perfection, and D-Lo’s Crew has steadily bled further into the lower sections of the arena.
The group, named after Dan Lowe, boasted its largest crowd Saturday against Northern Illinois. Nearly 100 students packed the rows closest to the court, shouted for the entirety of the game and ended the win with the signature scoreboard cheer that rocked The Convo at the O Zone’s peak in the early 2000s.
“It's awesome,” coach Saul Phillips said after he shot up in his chair and flashed a smile. “It adds to the enjoyment of the game for everyone in the building. It's a presence, and you don't get that all the time in mid-major basketball.”
In its two weeks of existence, D-Lo’s Crew has already met the vision the Ohio Athletic Department had when it brainstormed the idea in November.
That vision, however, was not always clear. Only 20 students attended the first meeting for D-Lo’s Crew the Friday night before finals week in December. The group had nearly 80 people originally sign up, but the doubts toward its sustainability were real.
Now, the question isn’t if it will last for the next game — it’s how many more students will show up.
“I’ll be honest, this is exceeding what I thought would actually happen,” Wand said. “The fact that we’re pulling people from other sections is tremendous.”
When the athletic department created D-Lo’s Crew, it needed it to grow internally. Students had to reach out to other students for the group to grow, and the athletic department took a hands-off approach toward promoting the group to as many students as possible.
The plan ensured only the most passionate students would join the group, and it’s been seamless.
Jared Roskin, a freshman and self-proclaimed sports junkie, was one of the first members to join D-Lo’s Crew. He was tired of seeing students don Ohio State apparel and wanted to be a part of a movement to expand Ohio’s fan base.
When Roskin saw a video about D-Lo’s Crew, he was hooked. He encouraged friends to join him, and other students who didn’t previously know Roskin have approached him and asked how they can join.
“I honestly have a great time,” Roskin said. “When we can get a group of people to give our team energy and screw with the other team as much as we can, I love doing that.”
Each game has brought more students eager to swing their arms back and forth in the scoreboard cheer; more cardboard cutouts of Phillips, Teyvion Kirk and, yes, Danny DeVito; and more scraps of the “O Zone Sentinel” newspaper thrown into the air after Ohio scores its first point each game.
If D-Lo’s Crew continues to inflate life back into The Convo, its atmosphere will return to among the toughest in the Mid-American Conference.
And that means Wand won’t have to worry about whether D-Lo’s Crew will last. He’ll worry about whether the student section will do enough to help Ohio win.
