Imagine that you’re a freshman at Duke and are stepping inside Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time. You look around and soak in all that college basketball’s mecca can offer, eagerly awaiting the beginning of the men’s basketball game. Then, for a brief moment, you wonder why your best friend, the biggest Duke fan you know, isn’t in the stadium. Of course, you’d never expect that your friend was actually in the stadium all along, jumping and dancing frantically around the court. Who would ever expect that your friend was actually the Blue Devil?
A select few are contacted by a current Blue Devil via email every year and encouraged to try out for the role of the mascot. Two months of sporadic and challenging tryouts weed out the unqualified; only the true Blue Devils are left standing. And when we say the most dedicated candidates, we mean it.
“I’m such a huge Duke fan, I tent out every year,” the current Blue Devil* said. “Not because I need to, but because I love it.”
To be a mascot at Duke, you have to possess a number of characteristics. Candidates have to be a certain height and weight in order to fit into the suit, athletic enough to take on the grind of an athletic event and be able to transform into another person when in character.
“Everyone has their own thing,” said Pat Rutter, Trinity ‘11 and former Blue Devil. “I knew one guy who was a gymnast, so he would do backflips off of the scorer’s table. I was a fairly good dancer. Another guy was a bigger guy, so he would do more physical movements.”
In order to take on the Blue Devil’s persona, mascots have to exude an enormous amount of confidence.
“Never before had I been super comfortable at Shooters or whatever, just busting it down on the dance floor, because honestly I didn’t think I was a good dancer. But I could always do it in the suit,” the Blue Devil said. “One of the interesting things is, in a lot of ways, I have become the Blue Devil and the Blue Devil has become me.”
Living a double life
Headbands
Being a “Dukebag”
Down goes the Blue Devil
Throw the red flag
It’s all fun and games until someone loses their head
*The current Blue Devil agreed to speak on the condition of maintaining anonymity.
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