I know Mizzou students love to show their school spirit during sporting events, but I think my school here in South Korea takes it to a whole new level.

My host school, Korea University, has a rivalry with Yonsei University. Every year, they have a big competition called 고연전 (Goyeonjon) with their teams in baseball, basketball, hockey, rugby and soccer. Whichever school wins the most matches during the two-day event gets bragging rights to say they won Goyeonjon. Korea University’s team is called the Young Tigers.

Now this is where Korea University outdoes Mizzou. They have their own version of cheerleaders, but they are more of a cheering team that is accompanied by a live band that plays songs as they cheer. There is a whole week dedicated to learning the cheers as freshmen. As exchange students, they had a kind of private session for us to learn the cheers. It was really fun, but you leave drenched with sweat from going so hard. All together there are 42 songs/cheers.

I wish I could show videos of everyone cheering and dancing together. They do this throughout the whole game. Usually in the United States, when the game is in play the music goes off and the fans occasionally cheer, but at Korea University, the band is playing while the cheer team dances and leads the crowd in the songs/cheers throughout the whole match — even during basketball. The whole time I wondered how they could hear with all this going on.

At the conclusion of Goyeonjon, the two schools mingle with each and the students visit their rival school’s town to hang out. In my school’s town, Anam, they close down some of the streets so we can walk around. They have this cool tradition that when you walk around with your group, if you sing to the store owners they will give you free alcohol and snacks.

Altogether, this is a crazy fun and exhausting weekend, and I think this has to be more extreme than a football weekend with tailgating back at Mizzou.