by Steven M. Andrews
He never shot a basket. He never came off the bench to spell a veteran player. He didn’t even play a single minute for the team. In fact, Dave Catalane ’05 was never even on the Fairfield basketball roster.
However, his absence next year will cause a major change for the team, as a replacement must be found for Catalane, who served as the Stags mascot at men’s and women’s basketball games for the previous three seasons.
Catalane never expected to spend so much time as the mascot; he originally planned to do it for just a few games. But after spending a few games running around in the costume, he began to really enjoy it. The nominal fee the school paid each game didn’t hurt either
“They didn’t even give me any instructions on what to do,” Catalane said. “They just told me to run around, fall down and make people laugh.”
Even though he was having a good time, Catalane didn’t reveal it to his friends initially.
“For the first five or six games, whenever my friends would ask me if I wanted to go watch the game, I’d tell them I couldn’t because I was working on a project,” he said. “When they’d come back, I’d ask them how the game was and they’d always say ‘The mascot kept coming up to us and waving!'”
Once he became comfortable as the mascot, Catalane began to enjoy some of the perks of the job. He was able to go into the press room during half time for food, as well as going with the team to the MAAC tournament his sophomore and junior year. They even gave him a free hotel room and food money.
One highlight of the MAAC tournament for him was the mascot game, where all of the schools sent theirs out to play a game of basketball.
Realizing the difficulty of playing basketball in a costume, Catalane instead focused on having fun.
“Most of us were just joking around, knocking off each other’s helmets and stepping on tails,” he said, “but there were also a few who were taking the job very seriously, like a professional job.”
Catalane also fondly remembers the time two years ago when he brought the costume out during a random night and ran around Campion.
“I was running up and down the hall and going into rooms,” he said. “People were really confused, but they definitely enjoyed it.”
He also admits that he will miss going to each home game and interacting with the crowd.
“I had a lot of fun entertaining people and running around,” Catalane said. “Just taking a picture with a kid or giving them a high-five would make their day.”
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