Student-created video showcasing Whitworth athletics becomes viral hit

During Midnight Madness, five Whitworth students premiered a music video that has become a viral hit both inside and outside the Whitworth community.

Junior Cody DeJardin, junior Peter Delap, senior Shannon Winant, junior Jesse Salzwedel and senior Drew Goranson created the video which featured a majority of Whitworth’s athletic teams. Almost all of the teams participated in the making of the video.

“They wanted to contribute, but they also wanted to see themselves in the video so it was cool that they wanted to participate and were participating willingly,” Salzwedel said.

They started with a goal of promoting Whitworth athletics and uniting the fan base behind a common Pirate identity for all Whitworth sports.

“The goal was to unite all of Whitworth, all of students, faculty, staff, alumni, the greater community,” Winant said. “Unite them toward the athletic program like letting them know that athletes are real people, too; they’re not separate. We’re Whitworth Pirates too. Everybody’s a Pirate, not just athletes.”

Head men’s basketball coach Matt Logie saw the video and was impressed.

“I thought that was awesome,” Logie said. “The guys did a great job putting that video and song together and to have that much involvement, from student athletes and cheerleaders and students all the way up to President Taylor, is just a neat way to showcase the university.”

The video has been shared by many students and faculty on social media sites including Facebook and Twitter.

“So many people have shared it, and so many people are all ‘I love my Pirates, this is the best school in the world, my school has swag,’” Winant said.

DeJardin said the video took a lot of time and effort to make but things seemed to work out well.

“Everything fell in place while making it,” DeJardin said. “All the teams that we had texted to meet at a certain time came and then they left and the new team came, it was just like they rotated super perfectly.”

Premiering the video after releasing a teaser earlier in the week was a big deal to these guys.

“I’ll be honest; I peed a little when it started,” Delap said jokingly.

However, the men were more concerned about the logistics of playing the video than the nerves of showing their project to the Whitworth community.

“I wasn’t nervous because we weren’t performing live I think people knew that this isn’t what we want to do for a career, so they aren’t judging us by our talent and our rapping ability, but in reality they’re like we’re just a couple of kids just trying to do something fun but also promote our school’s athletics,” Salzwedel said.

“It was very creative and it really showed off great Whitworth spirit,” freshman Justin Botejue said.

The creators have enjoyed some recognition on campus as a result of the video.

“I’ve got like four more Facebook friends,” DeJardin said.

The video has over 11,000 hits on YouTube and was also featured on a local news station.

For those interested, the video can be viewed on YouTube by searching “Whitworth We are Pirates” and clicking on the first result.

“We made the video, but we had nothing to do with how much it took off,” Delap said. “It’s all the fans, everybody at Whitworth had a part of this. All of Whitworth community made this popular. It wasn’t anything that we did.”

Contact Whitney Carter at [email protected].