Introducing Our Newest Contributor, Ryan Stivers

Hi. So if you’re reading this, you must be interested in me as the New Guy. That’s pretty exciting and I have to admit that even writing this gives me a chuckle.

First off I want to thank Levi and everyone at the WRNL team for being as welcoming and helpful as they have been. The guys here took a chance in letting me into their group and that’s pretty cool.

So with the thanks yous and appreciations aside, let’s get down to a few things about me:

• I grew up in a small town in southwest Iowa.
• I am probably one of thirty NBA fans currently living in Omaha.
• I love hip hop music. (Andre 3000 is wholly underrated still.)
• Craft beers are my jam, especially IPA’s and stouts.
• The Coen Brothers can do no wrong when it comes to film making.
• DeAndre Kane was hands down my favorite player to ever watch.
• I bleed cardinal and gold.

That last point is probably the one everyone is mostly interested in more than anything else I have to say or anything else I enjoy. My time as a Cyclone fan actually began before I even took my first breath, I actually attended my first game when my mom was something like six months pregnant with me. My dad has had season tickets to the football program for most of my time on this earth and as such I’ve seen literal heart break from no less than twenty rows from my eyes.

I’ve sat through snow storms, tornadoes, missed PAT’s, bad throws, and blown flags. I’ve witnessed our fans tearing down everything in Jack Trice and literal tears dropping from their eyes in moments of sadness. I’ve been to thousands of hours of tailgates, games and after parties. This school, for a better part of my life, was a second home to me on weekends during the fall. I was there when the hillside was so scorched earth that a bunch of us kids took cardboard and went sledding down the hill during September because the grass was so dead. I watched as the program peaked and valleyed season after season, and coach after coach.

But even through all that stuff, everything I saw, whether it was good or bad, horrible or unbelievable, every weekend was the same for me. No matter what happened in all of it, everyone always turned out. Week after week, month after month, and changing season after season, the fans still came out. We were still there. I don’t know much about other fan bases, but I do know the perseverance of an Iowa State fan. I know the struggle and the ache that we’ve felt and the terrible cards we’ve been dealt in this campaign of fandom. I’ve seen it, and that’s honest to God why I love it. We are irrationally confident, we are boisterous, and man do we love our teams without question.

The fans mean everything to this school and vice versa, they mean everything to me as well. I love this school because it has given me the best memories of my life and I can only hope now that in this medium and with everyone on this crew that we can show that same love and adoration we always have.