While the Illinois hockey team prepares for each game by practicing drills, its fans are at home doing research on each of the team’s opponents.

These fans are not searching the stat books to see how good the other squad is or what kind of season its best player is having. Instead, they’ve assembled a research and development team to search Google, Facebook and Twitter pages, among other sources of information, to find ways to taunt the players.

Once the juicy dirt is compiled, seniors Eric Stensland, Jacob Dubravec and Alex Nordlund bring it to the next home match and pass it around to anybody willing to sit with them and the rest of the Harassing Illini, all in an attempt to get fans involved and into opposing players’ heads.

As visiting players and coaches are introduced before each game, the fans in section CC, and many parts of the Ice Arena, let out a loud, “You suck!” chant. Shouting then comes from all the sections and the Harassing Illini have gotten most of the crowd involved, trying to give their team a distinct advantage. The taunts, which most definitely include profanities, won’t end until the third period is finished.

With the 2010-11 hockey season quickly approaching, the senior trio is preparing the Harassing Illini for what they hope will be another year of filling the stands and trying to rattle opposing players.

The goal this year among the fans is to bring the energy and passion that some of the most crazed soccer fans have.

“When you look at the World Cup, there’s that constant party inside the stands,” said Dubravec, the club’s vice president. “Right now, I think we’ve got some very enthusiastic people.”

One way the trio plans to incorporate that feeling, is to bring a piece of the most recent World Cup to the hockey matches.

“We have (vuvuzelas) in the budget,” said Stensland, the president of the Harassing Illini. “A World Cup atmosphere is definitely something we’re after.”

Noisemakers like the vuvuzela are what excite these Harassing Illini. Noisemakers aren’t allowed in the home venues of any Illinois varsity sport, so the fans make the most of them at the club hockey events.

They bring drums, gongs, maracas, megaphones and more, and encourage other people to bring whatever they can think of.

“The cowbell tends to be my weapon of choice,” said Nordlund, the treasurer of the club.

A proven way to intimidate is to shell out the insults, and they do so early and often. The Harassing Illini know they’re making a difference because the players react while they’re on the ice.

“The Harassing Illini’s greatest accomplishment that they pride themselves on, is that they made a goalie cry and he left the ice,” Dubravec said. “You know he wasn’t performing to the best of his abilities.”

Besides that, players have tried shooting pucks or throwing sticks at them.

Should the opposition overcome the chants during the game and put up a tally on the scoreboard, the players regularly point up in response to the fans. But this only encourages the rowdy section even more.

“When the other team scores, we say, ‘You still suck,’” Dubravec said.

“We have to try and get our guys back in it and let them know we’re still there,” Stensland added.

Just once have these three not shouted out insults to players. In that case, the athlete just had a close relative die, so the Harassing Illini decided it would not be in good taste to demean him.

That player was fortunate to not be taunted, but the players during the upcoming season will not have that luxury, unless there is an extreme case.

At Quad Day, the trio had great success in the recruitment of students to cheer on the team. More than 15 pages of notebook paper were filled with names and e-mail addresses of people interested in joining.

There could have possibly been more people on the list had people known the Harassing Illini were an actual Registered Student Organization.

“I had to shout that out to people at Quad Day,” Nordlund said. “I had to tell them that we were a real club.”

“We had some people come up to us that had no idea that we were with hockey,” Stensland added. “They thought that we were just harassing random people.”

The group continues to grow with the popularity of hockey increasing. Team USA had a good showing in hockey at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the Chicago Blackhawks are the most recent Stanley Cup Champions.

“Hockey is definitely on the upswing,” Stensland said. “Hopefully that, in turn, helps our team.”