It’s a common exchange. One we’ve all had so many times: “Where did you go to school?” But for me, this question has always led to a little fun.
“I went to the University of Richmond,” I answer.
“The Spiders!” comes the refrain. Most everyone knows my alma mater for its unique and — let’s be real — creepy, mascot.
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But here’s where the fun comes in.
“I was the Spider!”
“Wait, like THE Spider?”
And suddenly there are laughing exclamations, requests for photos, and questions … always questions about what it’s like to be a mascot.
So here we go, my friends. I’m pulling back the synthetic, smelly, matted fur to take a look at what it was like to be a mascot (albeit a very long time ago).
Alison Lukan dressed as Spidey, the University of Richmond mascot.
Richmond didn’t always identify as the Spiders. They used to be known as the Colts. But in 1894, a lanky pitcher named Puss Ellyson, who had a long kick in his delivery, inspired a local writer to describe the athlete as “taking to the field … as a spider in a web.” A new nickname was born. To this date, Richmond is the only U.S. college to have spiders as a mascot. And, really, does that surprise you?
But how did I end up in that costume?
The story begins my sophomore year (I attended Richmond in the early ’90s — we’ll reserve the specific years to protect the not so innocent). I responded to an ad in our school’s paper, The Collegian, to try out for a spot as the mascot. It sounded like a fun thing to do, even though details were sparse. The ad said there were a few spots to fill (for reasons I would soon come to understand), and one could head to Millhiser Gym for a tryout.
There were a few qualifiers for the job right off the bat. Everyone who was going to be the mascot had to be about the same height. After all, you can’t have people noticing that the Spider at last week’s game could barely climb into the stands while this week’s took stairs two at a time.
You also had to be personable and be able to interact with people in a completely nonverbal way … while wearing 15-plus pounds of braced cotton undergarments, a full head-to-toe bodysuit of fur (and four extra legs) and a papier-mache-esque head bigger than a beach ball that only allowed sightlines directly forward through mesh-covered eye holes and a mouth.
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How do you test for such capabilities? You put on the costume, and with a cheerleader as an escort, you promptly walk across campus to the dining hall during peak lunch hours to interact with your fellow students. Seriously.
It was a bit jarring, to be honest. It was very hard to see, and I found myself wanting to talk and then immediately diminishing my voice to a whisper which resulted in some weird echoing dialogue inside that gigantic head. But I passed the test, and my emergence into official mascotting was a go.
The logistics seemed simple. As one of three mascots, you signed up for football games a half at a time, and when basketball season came, you worked a game in its entirety. I was a little nervous to start. Right before I’d arrived at Richmond, Spidey had been attacked at a football game. Nothing sounded more challenging than that.
Until I showed up to work my first game.
I went into the fieldhouse at City Stadium to put on the Spidey costume for my inaugural appearance. First, you zipped up a cotton egg-shaped garment over your torso that included boning to build out the spider’s shape. Then you stepped into an ankle-to-neck suit that zipped up the back. You put on the shoes (not easy over a gigantic belly and extra arms flailing everywhere), popped on the head, secured it to the back of the suit with a clasp, and you were on your way.
Until you stepped outside.
The temperature highs in Richmond in September often range from the low- to mid-80s (or hotter). It’s also humid. When you’re wearing tens of pounds of padding and fur, that raises your internal body temperature to approximately 10,000 degrees. It was already hard to breathe in that head, and the heat made it even harder. It became instantly clear why we split football games between two mascots.
You had to learn quickly as the Spider. There was a lot more to do than walk across campus to the dining hall, wave hi and give hugs to the children in the stands.
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You had to learn how to communicate without any facial or verbal cues, and every time the football team scored, you had to ride an ATV around the track to celebrate. (That breeze was most welcome, but don’t get me started on the pressure of having to start that thing up with very little training in front of a waiting crowd.)
Once you did a lap, you had to do an overhead press for every point the team put on the board. Thankfully, that wasn’t usually a lot. (Sorry, 1990s football team.)
When Richmond football scored a touchdown, Spidey did a lap on an ATV.
Spidey (Alison Lukan) celebrating points on the board with shoulder presses.
You also had to strategize when you wanted to work. As laborious as it was to be in that costume, the only thing worse was when you had to be in that costume after someone else had worn it for the first half of the game.
You’d have to be crazy to do that, right? But the flip side is that at Richmond, as with many Southern universities, pregame tailgates veer closer to a cocktail party than any tailgate a girl raised on Big Ten ball ever knew. Women wore dresses, men wore jackets and ties, and attendance was mandatory. If you weren’t there, people wondered why. And at Richmond, you couldn’t tell anyone that you were the mascot.
So either miss the tailgate, get a clean costume and then be a mess afterward. Or attend the tailgate, get a gross costume and miss going out to the local hotspot during the second half of the game. Ah, the decisions we grapple with in our youth.
I reached out to the only two people I trusted with my secret back in the day to help flesh out the story. Erin Emmott (née Weber) and I have known each other since ninth grade. When she and I landed at Richmond as roommates, we met Blair Petrillo (née Flynn). And now, years later, we’ve all been friends longer than we haven’t. We know all of each other’s secrets, including how to manage my Spidey status.
“You wouldn’t be at our sorority’s tailgate, and people would ask, ‘Where is Alison?’ Because, why wouldn’t you be there?” Petrillo said. “I would have to make up some excuse, and it was a little hard to do that because why wouldn’t you be at a football game on a Saturday morning?”
Alison Lukan (top left), Erin Emmott (top right), Blair Petrillo (bottom left) and a friend at a University of Richmond tailgate.
But that was easier than trying to get me to a post-mascotting social event.
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“Your outfit underneath was biking shorts and a sports bra,” Emmott said. “After, all you could do was throw a hat and T-shirt on, and you were soaking in sweat. You would come home after games, and I could smell your laundry. It was just awful. Now that I have a household of boys that play sports, it’s about the same.”
The smell was horrific, indeed. Worse than the worst hockey bag. Even when my coach valiantly tried to wash the costume, the odor never truly left. I was always shocked that fans with whom I interacted never seemed to smell it.
But for all the heat and secrecy and smell, being a mascot was a whole lot of fun. It never ceased to amaze me that people didn’t think a spider mascot was scary or weird. Fans were great and their energy kept you going.
Kids wanted to say hi, people wanted pictures, and you could get a chant going just by waving all eight of your connected spider arms to them. You got to bring people together. You got to make someone laugh. You got to make someone smile. And even if all your friends didn’t know it was you inside that costume, it was always nice to see them and hopefully bring them a little fun.
“You would wave at us,” Petrillo said. “You knew where we were in the stands, I remember that.”
Spidey (Alison Lukan) visits with fans on the sideline prior to a University of Richmond basketball game.
Overall, being the Spider was an ad hoc experience. For our teams, there weren’t a lot of games when mascots would interact. The one time we did, at a basketball playoff, a botched shadowboxing match at center court turned into me tripping my rival to the floor after he repeatedly hit my Spidey head, making my own head feel like a metronome inside that big globe. After I dropped him to the floor, we didn’t perform any of the other skits we’d planned that day.
After two years as everyone’s favorite arachnid, as I headed into my senior year, I decided to hang up my antennae. With that, I finally got to share my news now that my mascot days would be described in the past tense.
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“After it was done, you revealed it in our sorority meeting,” Petrillo said. “We used to write anonymous things on paper and put them in a basket. They could be silly, embarrassing, whatever. People would read them out. When it came out you had been the Spider, everybody went crazy.”
Since I’ve left Richmond, the mascot has continued to evolve. It has gone through a couple of new looks, and in 2011 even got a new name (in part because the school found out Marvel Comics owns the license to the name Spidey). The new mascot is called “WebstUR.” Get it? And that may have been the most passionate topic of my conversation with my fellow alums.
“I hate the new Spider,” Emmott said.
“There’s only one true Spider, and that was your version,” Petrillo added quickly. “It was friendly!”
Memories fully reviewed, I had one last question for my friends before we clicked off our Zoom meeting: “What does it say about me that I was a college mascot?” They seized the opportunity to hit me with their character wit.
Emmott: “Oh, everything.”
Petrillo: “You’re a joiner. Can I get a shot in at your leadership degree, too?”
Emmott: “Definitely a team player! And there’s no ‘i’ in team!”
Me: “There’s an ‘i’ in spider, though!”
And after the laughs died down, Emmott offered one last opinion, reminding all of us why we know each other so well. And, as usual, she answered the question of why I wanted to be a mascot better than I ever could.
“When I told my husband (you were a mascot), he said, ‘Of course she was,’” Emmott said. “You’re the person who would be the team mascot. You’re the person who would be the fun person but would not necessarily want people to know who you were. But you want to be the team spirit and be all of this enthusiasm and firing people up and be part of the crowd. All while still getting to be anonymous. And that’s a very cool thing.”
(All photos courtesy of Alison Lukan)
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