Behind the facade of an ordinary student is a man with a secret that he hides from classmates and many of his friends.
When day turns to night, the senior transforms into his alter ego, donning a mask and a nearly 40-pound costume to embody the George Washington mascot. For generations, the mascot has served as something of an apostle for GW basketball and collective athletics hype — complete with bushy white eyebrows, a powdered wig, a tricorn and other traditional colonial garb.
“At this point, when the head goes on, the mindset, you just shift,” said the man beneath the George mask, who requested anonymity to maintain the mystery behind his identity.
As he enters his fourth season donning the mascot of the University’s namesake, the senior has learned to separate the George character from his own. But he’s developed cheeky characteristics that have become the expectation when George makes his appearances at GW home basketball games and campus events like the annual Midnight Breakfast.
“George has a little bit of an attitude,” he said. “George is sassy. George is fun. George likes to dance. I feel like there’s a lot of things that have to live in George for a while.”
The senior said he first suited up as the mascot after seeing a flyer for the position his first year. Hours after he applied for the role, he received an email asking if he was available for the season-opening doubleheader. With some mascoting experience from his work with charity organizations in high school, he stepped into the George suit without tryouts or practice.
When he first put on the costume, he met some difficulties. He found his field of view was limited under the mascot head, making it tough to navigate around the court of Smith Center with quarter-sized eye holes to see.
“I’ve always said that it’s like wearing 10 pairs of sunglasses and there’s a kaleidoscope in the middle,” the senior said. “And it’s also like looking through binoculars, because you can only see two spots.”
He said now, he can walk the Smith Center blind and the costume has become a “second skin,” but each game day, he needs time to focus on George’s personality, abandon his own more mild-mannered traits and prepare for the physical exertion of his game-time performances.
“I need to get there and get in the zone, so I don’t have any pregame rituals or anything,” he said. “But really, just getting in the zone, stretching is really important because you’re doing a lot in the suit.”
His stretches help to maintain the flexibility needed for some of George’s moves. To celebrate George’s birthday last February, he joined the First Ladies dance team for a choreographed routine that included push-ups and arm rolls.
During the games, George mainly relies on a script that directs what he does and when, typically written by a marketing official. While the script changes often, he usually has to manage seat visits to fans in the crowd, halftime shows where he hypes the crowd alongside provided entertainment and occasional performances with the school’s cheer and dance teams. He said he has “such good” relationships with members of the spirit groups.
“Performing as George, you do a lot with — especially game day — with cheer and dance and the Foghorns,” the senior said. “I feel like George doesn’t fit in any of those three groups but kind of ties them all together.”
As games progress, George makes his way around the Smith Center to take pictures with fans and students and participates in on-court events during timeouts like trivia and fan-competitions. George often appears with a “handler” — another member of the athletics community that helps him take pictures with fans and acts as his “voice,” since he can’t talk or hear inside the suit.
“It’s important to have eyes and ears that can do all those things,” he said.
The senior said there are many fans that are afraid of George but most of them aren’t kids. Instead, he said most kids “love George” while adults comprise the majority of the fearful. He said he ignores any frightened children but will approach spooked students and adults as their friends wave aggressively to bring him over, only to find the students “cowering.”
“There’s a good chunk of the student population that is terrified of George, and I will say that George likes messing with those people,” he said.
George has made appearances at events throughout the District, from weddings of GW alums to the birthday event of the Washington Nationals’ mascot, Screech, this past spring. Over the course of his time as George, he has also built close relationships with rival schools’ mascots, both inside and out of costumes. He has become friends with the student who plays George Mason’s Patriot mascot but has a more antagonistic relationship with St. Joseph’s Hawk.
“The entire time, the Hawk just flaps its wings,” he said. “They do it for two hours, so George always goes and does it back and tries to get him to do a dance battle.”
In addition to dance battles, George often engages in rock-paper-scissors battles with other mascots and fans alike, in which he is a frequent loser.
“I consider myself good at rock, paper, scissors, if you can consider yourself that,” he said. “But George is, I don’t think George has ever won a rock-paper-scissors round. It’s weird.”
Entering his last year as George, he said he’s managed to keep his alter ego under wraps for three years, except for one moment where he almost let it slip during a class with another student named George. He said he would turn to answer before realizing he was not the George being called on.
He said he’ll miss his time as the character and the relationships he’s built with other members of the GW spirit community over the past three years, teasing that he might reveal his identity at the end of the year.
“It’s just been so fun, and it’s such a weird gig,” he said. “The amount of weird things that happen are incredible, but it’s been so fun, and I’ve loved it.”
