When was the first crowd wave

View the full definition in the Macmillan Dictionary. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Written by admin. Definition an occasion when people watching a sports event stand up and sit down in groups, so that their movements look like a large wave moving through the crowd Origin and usage Mexican wave is a descriptive phrase that is derived from the motion of spectators who participate in the exercise of moving in near unison like an ocean wave.

Krazy George claims he went section by section and explained to the fans what he wanted them to do. After a few starts and stops, the entire stadium was doing it.

They say Rob Weller has done a version of the wave in past minor league and high school games but there is no video record of it. The Homecoming game marked its first official debut at the Husky Stadium.

Who to believe? The proof is in the footage:. According to the Guinness Book of World records the longest Mexican wave timed is 17 minutes 14 seconds by Tube, a Japanese rock band , and their fans at Hanshin Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan, on 23 September with over 2, people participating. We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements.

Seat width divided by 0. John Purser, Barnstaple UK. I remember the first use of "the wave" at the University of Washington in - I was there.

There was a lot of discussion on campus about how to get the wave going. The cheerleaders set up the event in a quite organized way but it only took a couple of tries for it to take hold.

Stu Hillman, Bellac, France. I'm not sure about the waves always going clockwise. I remember being at Lords during a test match and a series of waves went anti-clockwise, complete with the requisite boos as it passed with no effect through the MCC members in the pavilion. The wave started with the Barmy Army regulars in the mound stand, across the Eldrich and Compton stands and then onto the Grandstand.

One theory could be that this is due to the unique Lords environment where the most merry section is anti-clockwise from the posh seats. I'm not sure it would be possible to get a clockwise wave going with only the Tavern stand between the Army and the pavilion it would never gain enough momentum.

Jim Cumming, Princes Risborough. I have helped start a Mexican wave with literally half a dozen people. It took us only three attempts to get it to go the whole way round the MEN Arena.

Incidentally, it went anti-clockwise. Gem, Leeds. I remember doing the wave at Milwaukee Brewers games when I was four in I was too short to really participate so my dad would lift me up in the air over his head when the wave came around. John, Washington, DC. The wave does run counter-clockwise in Australia. I've been to many a cricket match at the MCG seated in the members' area and watched fans in the lowest level seating on the opposite side of the ground get together to launch a wave.

It usually takes one or two goes for them to get enough attention from the people around them and in the section to their right, but then, off it goes - counter-clockwise. The wave always breaks when it hits the members to the boos of the rest of the crowd - but the timing remains. The few members who do jump up or simply raise their arms a bit do so in perfect time with the wave's pace and it always picks up again on the other side.

Waves often circulate three, four or even five times - or until the batsman hits the ball whichever comes first. After college he worked as a teacher for several years, but then Krazy George became a professional cheerleader, and he expanded on the San Jose State cheer with teams such as the minor league hockey Colorado Rockies in the late s. Though the crowds were sometimes small, on big nights he could get fans to stand up by sections yelling "Go Go," but the crowd often lost interest.

But when he just had sections stand up in Waves yelling "Go! The next step in the evolution, he says, came in when he went to a high school rally in Santa Clara in the Bay Area at the request of a friend, and -- by standing at midcourt and turning and pointing to students -- sparked them to stand up in a Wave that went all the way around the small gym.

That episode, he remembers, was on his mind that day at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in when he decided to start a Wave at the A's-Yankees game. He says he started by organizing three adjacent sections to start The Wave on his signal, but "it took me three or four tries," for it to catch on.

At later events, Henderson says he'd rarely do The Wave more than once per game. But that day, he led it three times. And, he did The Wave at Olympic soccer games in , which helped introduce it to the rest of the world.

Though Krazy George lays claim to being the first with The Wave, Jeff Bechthold, the University of Washington's director of communications for athletics, calls the issue a "little complex. So, just as Krazy George's ideas evolved leading up to his Wave, so had Washington's. Even with that, however, Krazy George comes out the chronological winner in the "documented Wave" division.

After the game with Stanford, The Wave became a staple at Huskies games and was taken back to campuses across the country by visiting cheerleaders.