Friday nights not only consist of battles between football teams, but the constant back and forth chants between their student sections creates a competition of its own. However, this Friday’s game will be different. After the tragic loss of Millard West senior, Blake McKune, on Saturday Oct. 27, Westside Red Shield and Millard West ‘Crazies’ have decided to put the rivalry aside and come together as one to honor McKune.

After hearing about McKune’s death, on Monday Oct. 29, Westside Red Shield leaders Cedric Homan, Ethan Goldner and Nolen Breedlove direct messaged the Crazies’ leaders on Twitter, inviting them to the pre-game tailgate Friday night and suggested the student sections combine themes.

“Nolen and I were sitting talking and we thought it’d be a good idea to do something for [Millard West] because we heard about what happened,” Goldner said. “We felt really bad, we knew they were probably going through a hard time. Nolen is the one who said the idea should happen.”

Homan and Goldner said the Crazies were very thankful that they reached out to the Millard West community.

“They repeated [how much they appreciated the message] multiple times,” Homan said.

Crazies’ leader Cassie Hallgren, said Red Shield made a huge impact at Millard West this week.

“Honestly, I got very emotional when [Red Shield] dm’d us on twitter because we need support like that,” Hallgren said.

The Crazies agreed to combine tailgates and share a blue out theme, McKune’s favorite color. Westside cheerleaders will also be giving Millard West’s cheerleaders blue ribbons to put on their uniforms and in their hair.

“I expect [the amount of Millard West students to show up at the tailgate] to be about the same amount as how many Westside people go,” Homan said.

The unity of the two schools was recognized on social media by the Omaha High School Football twitter account (@OmahaHSFootball).

“It was nice to be recognized, but we weren’t really doing [it] as a publicity stunt,” Goldner said. “We knew how they were feeling because personally I’ve felt that and probably a lot of people at Westside have felt losing a close friend from high school, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible for them.”