After doing a little more research and finding the solution, I realized that what I was wanting to do and how I worded it in the original post were not the same thing.

I was actually wanting the 'orderby' to descend and found it in ForumGroups.ascx...then in the queryrepeater I changed "orderby='ForumDisplayName'" to "orderby='ForumDisplayName DESC'"...and it worked.

Thanks,
forrester