During his time at St. Joe’s, Adam Booth ’13 could always be found front and center of the student section in Hagan Arena cheering on the men’s and women’s basketball teams.
After four years of sitting in the front row, leading chants and bringing energy to Hawk Hill, Booth channeled his fandom into a new sport. He leads the “Sons of Ben,” a supporters group for the Philadelphia-based Major League Soccer franchise known as the Philadelphia Union.
“They are the most rowdy, most feverish and the most vocal supporters of the Philadelphia Union and they occupy a similar area to the students’ section, one quarter of the stadium that’s basically just devoted to them,” Booth said.
As one of a dozen “capos” for the Sons of Ben, Booth’s job at Subaru Park’s River End, the section where Sons of Ben’s fans sit for every home game, is to lead the chants from the front row and make sure the fans are coordinating properly on game day, similar to what he did at Hagan Arena.
“Anybody who was going to St. Joe’s games when Adam [Booth] was in school knew exactly who he was,” said Michael J. Lyons, associate professor and chair of the communications and media studies department. “He was the loudest person in the arena, he was super vocal and super animated. He was hard not to notice at our games.”
Before his arrival on Hawk Hill, Booth was already an avid college basketball fan. But after he attended his first few Hawks games, he became an admirer of both squads.
“As a sports fan it was cool to see, that seemed like the next level of sports,” Booth said. “The [men’s team] was really bad when I was there my freshman year but it allowed me to meet the real diehards, the people who are really there for basketball.”
As a leader of the Sons of Ben’s fan section, Booth’s job is to be the loudest person in the section, making sure fans are singing along to chants and supporting their hometown Philadelphia Union.
“It was very similar to what I was doing at St. Joe’s,” Booth said. “[As capo] your primary goal is you’re leading the chants, you’re getting the people going, you’re yelling out the directions.”
Booth said there is another, more intangible side to his role too.
“You’re making sure people feel comfortable in the situation that they’re in,” Booth said. “I take it upon myself, and I think a lot of the other capos do, to try to make people feel comfortable. If you’re just a casual fan of sports, you would not necessarily be prepared for the experience that is the River End.”
The experience at River End is unlike any other in sports, and according to Booth, it sets the standard for how Philadelphia fans support their local teams. Booth described the scene before the pandemic as “wild and loud.”
“There’s smoke bombs, there’s flags, there’s giant banners, it is a place for a fan to be themselves at the maximum that they want to be,” Booth said.
The coronavirus pandemic hindered Booth’s role as capo. The Philadelphia Union did not allow fans for a portion of last season, but fans are slowly starting to return to the stadium for the 2021 season.
After watching games from home, Booth and the Sons of Ben were allowed to return to Subaru Park under different circumstances.
“The Union themselves opened up the stadium for parties where families would fit in pods that were sectioned off and you could watch the game on our new giant big screen,” Booth said. “As a capo, I was put under the giant big screen, was given flags and smoke bombs and was told to do the best I could from that position and it was tough, but it was nice to get out there.”
According to Sons of Ben President Matt Gendaszek, in spite of some of these restrictions, Booth has done an excellent job leading fans and has been a crucial part of the Sons of Ben’s respected reputation around the MLS.
“Adam [Booth], because of his energy and his personality, he usually runs around the River End,” Gendaszek said. “He’ll be on the ladder in the front and center of the River End, and then at one point, somebody else will get on a ladder and he’ll come down with a megaphone and he will cover up and down the stairs of the entire River End doing chants.”
Looking back on his time as Booth’s professor, Lyons said it was shocking to see the difference of how he acted in the classroom versus who Booth was as a St. Joe’s sports fan and who he’s become as a member of the Sons of Ben.
“I remember the first time I saw him at a basketball game, because he’s not like that [in class],” Lyons said. “If you hang out with him one on one, or in class, he was a really shy kid. Is there something about sports that does that?”
Booth even found himself on a Philadelphia Union billboard, which displayed a picture of himself leading chants set up on Interstate 95.
“I was like ‘oh my gosh,’” Booth said. “I had my entire giant face on one quarter of a billboard. It was me, the Philadelphia Union logo, [and] the Sons of Ben were in the background. I’m not going to say it was the most flattering photo, but it was an intense photo and absolutely insane.”
