Mascot for York Football

Nate was super excited to be the mascot for York.  When he signed up, he had thought that he would be going to cheer class instead of PE, but the cheer coaches decided to just have him come spend a short period called advisement with the cheer girls once a week.  The coaches didn't have a lot of expectations of the mascot as this was the first year that they had one.  They told him he could come to one or two games a week (there were usually two games for 7th grade and two games for 8th grade every week), and that he could stay as little or as long as he wanted.  He decided he was going to go to every game that he could-so 4 games a week.  He did have a learning curve where he figured out what he could do as the mascot.  Since there was no direction, and he didn't practice with the cheerleaders, he wasn't involved in the stunts or in the cheers. By the end of the season, he got where he could follow along with the cheerleaders on a lot of their cheers.  He also sometimes just did his own dance while they were cheering.  He loved to mess with the cheerleaders- he would steal their poms, he would stand in their place.  One day he gathered a bunch of their poms together in a megaphone while they were stunting.  When they came to get them, he dumped them on the ground and jumped on top of them.  It was very fun to watch.  One day he showed off his cheer jumps just like the girls did.  Almost every game, there would be a time when the girls would go out into the field and all take turns doing their tumbling.  Nate would go out there and after they all did round-off back handsprings or round-off tucks, he would do a cartwheel.  The audience, when they noticed, ate it up.  

He also frequently went into the stands and interacted with the audience.  Lots of kids liked to get their pictures taken with him.  He would high-5 as many as wanted to. When it was pink-out month, he went to a party store and bought some pink accesories- a pink hat and a pink chain and then wore those with his costume.

Since this was the first year for the mascot at York, there was no bag to carry the costume in.  Joe and Nate worked together to find, design and create a bag that would work for him to carry the mascot costume around in.

There was one game that they went and cheered with the varsity cheerleaders from Grand Oaks High School.  Grand Oaks has their own mascot, so they got to interact, and he even got to talk to him for a few minutes and learn some about being the mascot at GOHS.