"Obama Brings Good Cheer to Sidwell Friends" - “O-ba-ma!” chant v. “Oatmeal sucks!”

[Pirate Smile]

Obama Brings Good Cheer to Sidwell Friends
Posted by Dave McKenna on Dec. 11, 2008, at 2:23 pm

Portis/Zorn isn’t the only rivalry to heat up around here lately: For Sidwell Friends/Maret, it’s on.

On Saturday, Maret’s basketball boys were leading Sidwell Friends on the road when the home crowd taunted the visitors with a chant ripped from the headlines:

“The Sidwell kids started yelling ‘O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!’ at us,” a Maret parent who attended the game tells me.

The First Family Elect’s first major post-election decision, of course, dealt with where to send daughters Malia and Sasha to school. Most reports had Maret and Sidwell as the finalists in the Obama sweepstakes.

After tours of both, Sidwell landed the kids for next year. So while Malia and Sasha aren’t even enrolled there yet, they’re already cheerleaders. And what the Sidwell fans were telling Maret with their “O-ba-ma!” chant was: “Even if you whup us at hoops, we still beat you in a bigger game!”

The Maret parent says Maret’s administrators looked confused, and Sidwell’s bemused, as “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!” rained down from the grandstand.

Just words? Hardly.

“On the Maret side, that was insulting and incendiary,” says the Maret parent, who requested anonymity. “How crass!”

Maret’s side eventually responded by yelling “Oatmeal sucks!” — a play on Sidwell’s nickname, the Quakers.

To add insult to insult: Perhaps inspired by the clever nastiness of the home fans, Sidwell came back and beat Maret by a point, 47-46.

A call to Sidwell’s athletic director to get a comment on the fans’ alleged un-Friendly chant hasn’t yet been returned. But we’ll follow this story and do everything journalistically possible to build the Sidwell/Maret rivalry into something that can last two terms.

The big news for now: There’s a Sidwell/Maret rematch tomorrow night at Maret.

Come game time, the Maret kids will have had almost a week to come up with something better, or at least something bitterer, than “Oatmeal Sucks!”

The whole world is watching!

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/12/11/obama-brings-good-cheer-to-sidwell-friends/

[TheDoorbellRang]

1. Malia and Sasha are gonna be

like Harry Potter on his first day at Hogwarts. Lots of pressure on those two little girls. Good thing they have an awesome family to keep them grounded.

[Jennicut]

3. LOL...like Harry Potter. I think they will be be mini celebrities but Michelle and O

have good heads on their shoulders and will help them with this.

[AspenRose]

2. Wow.

A world I am totally unfamiliar with. :dunce:

[Pirate Smile]

4. Standard high school rivalry with a twist.

I love the "Oatmeal Sucks!" rejoinder. Classic.

[qwlauren35]

5. I think it's clever, m'self.

This is the second set of presidential children to attend Sidwell. Perhaps they yelled "Carter" in years gone by.

I've heard the cheer "You Suck"... "Oatmeal Sucks" notches up on several levels of intelligence.

But on the other hand... I hope this dies quickly so that the kids can be kids. There are hundreds of kids with famous parents at Washington's private schools. Having attended one, I think the good thing is that the students forget pretty quickly. On the other hand, the thought of having secret service in my class with me is icky... unless they are VERY handsome!!!

I hope for the girls' sake that the Secret Service detail wins them kudos, instead of creeping out their classmates.

Guarding school age kids is probably a rather awkward job.