High school football: Johnsburg finds unlikely anthem to 2016 season in Will Ferrell movie

When the bass drum hits the first beat, their eyes light up.

By the second bass note, their hands are clapped high above their heads. They continue clapping with the beat, letting their arms fall between claps.

The song blares at every Johnsburg home game. Usually once before the game, once at halftime when the team retakes the field, and then again if the Skyhawks win.

And the Skyhawks have done nothing but win in 2016.

For reasons that were never intentional, Billy Squier’s 1981 single “The Stroke” has become their rallying song. Coach Dan DeBoeuf laughed when asked about it this week as his team prepared for its first trip to the IHSA state finals, where it will meet Rochester in the Clas 4A title game Friday.

“It’s kind of our anthem,” DeBoeuf said.

After beating Genoa-Kingston in the quarterfinals, the Skyhawks sang the school fight song with the Johnsburg fans and then the first song over the loudspeaker was “The Stroke.” Players started clapping, and soon the crowd followed suit.

The story behind Johnsburg’s connection with the song dates back more than a year.

“When it really clicked was last year on the way home from Pontiac,” senior safety Blake Lemcke said.

Johnsburg beat Pontiac in the first round of the 2015 playoffs. The Skyhawks took a coach bus to the game and watched “Friday Night Lights” on the way there. On the way back – still on an emotional high from the win – the team popped in “Blades of Glory,” starring Will Ferrell.

The 2007 movie, a comedy about two rival figure skaters, opens with Jimmy MacElroy (played by Jon Heder) skating an elegant routine to “Con te partiro” by Italian classical tenor Andrea Bocelli. The crowd goes wild and the announcers are in awe of MacElroy.

Then Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) enters, talks some smack to MacElroy, and over the sound system comes “The Stroke.”

“Step aside homeschool, there’s a new sheriff in town,” Ferrell’s character says.

Ferrell claps his hands above his head while he skates and the crowd transforms from a hushed figure skating audience into something more closely resembling a rock concert.

On the Johnsburg bus that day in 2015, a handful of Skyhawks players started clapping over their heads like Ferrell. More followed. Soon, the whole bus was doing it.

“Our bus was so fired up about the win, everybody was doing the overhead clap together,” DeBoeuf said. “It kind of stuck.”

Quarterback Riley Buchanan couldn’t remember who exactly started the clap.

“I couldn’t pinpoint one person, but I think seven, eight guys started at once,” he said. “Then it just kept on going with the rest of the guys jumping in.”

Johnsburg lost to Chicago Phillips in the second round last year, but the memory of that bus ride never went away. The coaches put the song on the team’s practice playlist.

“Coach likes to have music on at practice,” Lemcke said. “After hearing it every day at practice, you start to pick up on it.”

At games this year, whenever it comes on during warm-ups, the players waiting their turn to run a play, a route or a drill will keep the clap going.

“(It’s) kind of like a thing: Guys, we’ve got this,” Buchanan said. “We also know that the game of football is an awesome game, and it’s supposed to be fun. You’ve got to relax, that’s just kind of our team thing, I guess.”

It’s that much more fun after a win, too.

“It’s a great way to get the crowd involved,” Buchanan said. “It’s awesome, a great way to unite the community together and a cool thing to be a part of.”