Re: Michigan Tech 2012-13 Preseason Thread: Draft picks, video feeds, and Mel, oh my
Because it wouldn't be original, and we've already ripped off enough cheers with "Sieve" from Cornell/Michigan/Wisconsin/etc. and "E^x" from RPI.
Besides, mining is more important.
Off of the Wisconsin Alumni Association page on 1970s roadtrips, the SIEVE chant was Michigan Tech's.
Look midway down the page from this site:
https://www.uwalumni.com/home/1970sRTT.aspx
As quoted:
Did you ever wonder about the "SIEVE" chant at hockey games and how it came about? Believe it or not, it came from a road trip that I was on !! Here is the story:
It is the beginning of the 1970-71 hockey season — Badger Bob Johnson was the coach--maybe in his second or third year — and hockey was just beginning to become "hot" on campus, as the football team was still trying to recover from an 0-21-2 record, that was only broken in the fall of '69 against IOWA ( at home ), and the basketball team had not finished in the top half of the conference in at least 5 years.
Well, out of nowhere, these hockey players were winning games and the excitement of seeing 2 games and in good likelihood 2 wins was really something of newly charted territory for the Wisconsin sports fan. Having been to my first hockey game ever the year before ( in the spring ), I had already bought season tickets for both Friday and Saturday night games for the 70-71 season with a group of guys that I lived in the dorm with. Some of these guys came from northern Wisconsin, near the border of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan ( Florence, Wisconsin ) and were quite familiar with the game through the coverage of the team from Michigan Tech in Houghton, Michigan.
One of them said he had a friend going to school there and asked if we wanted to go up there for the weekend series against the Michigan Tech Huskies and we could all crash at his friend's room in the dorm. I was one of the 6 people who took the trip ( we stopped in Fond du Lac to fill up on gas because the price was so low — $0.29 per gallon ) to see the Badgers play at "old" Dee "stadium." I must describe this stadium — it had 3 rows of seats and a railing all around for "standing room" tickets, I say standing room because basically you tried to grab onto the railing and stay there for the entire game and hold onto the railing to keep your spot! One other thing that I forgot to mention--you could see clear through the cracks in the siding to the outside! If it was heated--it was only because of the air coming out of the lungs of the fans, and not from any heater in the building. It was in the arena that these 6 Badger fans went to cheer on the hockey team and where we first heard the SIEVE chant after a goal was scored AGAINST the Badger team. That is right, the SIEVE chant was a Michigan Tech cheer! It was really the only thing you could say and still be understood when your teeth were chattering because of the "natural" air conditioning in November on the shores of Lake Superior!
Well — seeing/hearing the SIEVE chant there in Dee Stadium, we thought that maybe this was something we could bring back to the Dane County Coliseum for the Badgers. The next weekend, we made a dorky cardboard sign, then sat low near the ice (even though the seats were not that good for seeing the game action) so that we could be seen by all the people in the stadium, we introduced the SIEVE chant to University of Wisconsin hockey fans. The rest you might say is history — it only took that Friday night (about 5 goals were scored by the Badgers I think) and by Saturday the whole crowd was into it without any prompting (remember most of the crowd was there on Friday night as well).
From my recollection, the following people from Rust House (the Rust-Schreiner Scholarship Cooperative on Orchard Street) were on the Michigan Tech Road trip:
Bill Olson from Florence, Wisconsin (his white Chevy had the "wheels" that got us there and back) and the friend where we could "crash."
Brian "Sneak" Piehl from Waupan, Wisconsin
John Burlowski from Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Harold "Butch" Johnson from Beloit, Wisconsin
Tim Lindgren from Rice Lake, Wisconsin
and myself
My thanks to them and to the members of Rust House (Al Bates, Terry Ackerman, Arnie Wolff, Cecil Massie, Ken Mandl, Tom Stroik, and others whose names I cannot now remember ) who on that first Friday night after the trip, helped create part of Wisconsin Hockey lore and legend, that continues to live on. SIEVE!
I am not sure if you will print this, but, I thought it might be of an interest to some of the BADGER fans of today.
Shawn Bergemann ’74, MBA’80
La Grange, Illinois
