Fast-paced and hard-hitting, ice hockey’s one of the world’s great spectator sports. The game itself, however, is only one part of the total entertainment experience at every Syracuse Crunch home game. Besides the slap shots, sleight-of-hand saves, blazing skating and body-checking, there is the new video scoreboard focusing on fans during Boogie Cam. There’s Big Sexy pulling off his T-shirt and shaking it in the faces of the opposing team. There’s the Mirabito Ice Girls dancing the “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” There’s Al the Ice Gorilla delivering pizza certificates to lucky fans. “Game nights get a bit hectic around the office,” admits Mike Folsom, the Crunch’s senior director of sales who has overseen game operations for more than seven seasons. “We’ll roll up T-shirts, prepare other giveaway items, load graphics and videos into the scoreboard, upload new music to the DJ’s computer and set up our promotion elements in our central meeting area at ice level. Between public relations getting their elements ready and marketing getting theirs, it’s easy for chaos to break out from time to time.” No doubt.
But as Folsom readily acknowledges, the fans themselves really create the exciting arena ambiance. “The atmosphere we create is 100 percent thanks to the fans,” he said. “When we’re down, they pick us up. When we’re up, they keep us up.” Folsom credits his staff for picking up on the crowd’s many moods: “A packed house might want to get on their feet and do the wave. A younger crowd might want some more video clips. An older crowd might be looking for a different mix of music. Either way we try to listen to what the fans want and make the experience and atmosphere their own to enjoy.” And there are at least three off-ice elements generated by fans themselves and fully supported by Folsom and the Crunch. The Hanson brothers, for instance. The Hanson brothers
During the third period of every home game, after an opposing player is sent to the penalty box, Crunch music coordinator Tony Valerino spins the “Bonanza” TV theme, and one of three season ticket-holders dressed as the Hanson brothers runs from behind the bench to the box and slams into the glass. Ever since the Crunch was founded in 1994, the faux Hansons – Frank Szymanoski, his brother Ray and Ray’s wife, Brenda – have been paying tribute to “Slap Shot,” the 1977 movie partially filmed at our own Onondaga County War Memorial. Wearing replica Charleston Chiefs uniforms, the Szymanoskis ably portray the bellicose bespectacled fictional forwards from the film. With their blue-and-yellow game sweaters, black wigs and horn-rimmed glasses, the ‘Hansons’ embody hockey’s wackier side, and the Crunch experience is all the richer for their offbeat effort. ‘More cowbell!’
And then there are the cowbells. Carloads of cowbells.
More than three dozen cowbell ringers sit in Section 7, and greet every Crunch goal with a clanging cacophony. There are three timeouts in each of hockey’s three 20-minute periods. Folsom’s game operations staff fills some of those breaks by airing a famous sketch from “Saturday Night Live” Will Ferrell plays a rock’n’roll percussionist at a recording session while Christopher Walken, portrays real-life producer Bruce Dickinson. The clip culminates in Walken’s immortal line, “Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription…is more cowbell!” “The fans, they like that,” says Karen Simbari, Crunch director of events and sponsorship services. Section 7 sure likes it. The cowbells often ring louder for Walken than they do for a difficult kick save by our goalie. Willy-nilly ringing
One fan’s fun, however, can be another fan’s nightmare.
“These people are as annoying as hell,” exclaimed serious hockey fan T.J. Jiries at the opening face-off on Oct. 30, and he wasn’t talking about the visiting Albany Devils. Jiries, who sits way up in Section 9, pointed across the aisle to a group of 45 revelers wearing plastic top hats and ringing miniature cowbells celebrating the upcoming wedding of Crunch fans Jim Gosson and Dana Clifton. While Section 7’s cowbellers remained fairly disciplined, ringing only when appropriate, the novice hockey fans in the wedding party rang willy-nilly and often. It drove Jiries crazy enough that in the second period he secured rink-side seats far removed from the din. Speaking of annoyances, there’s one fan habit the Crunch does nothing to encourage – the carefully timed insult aimed at opposing goalies after they’ve allowed a Crunch goal in which thousands intone the poor chap’s surname thrice before thunderously adding, “You suck!” The chastising chant may be discourteous and even inaccurate, but it certainly adds to the raucous atmosphere. Kiss Cam offshoots
The Crunch experience runs the gamut from raucous to warm and fuzzy.
For years, Crunch cameramen have scoped the War Memorial stands seeking cuddly couples to feature on Kiss Cam. One of Kiss Cam’s standing jokes is to finish the sequence by focusing on a couple of opposing players who never kiss, of course, but never fail to draw a guffaw. Now the video shticks have multiplied – Smile Cam, Hug Cam, Fan Cam and Boogie Cam, on which fans dance like maniacs. Big Sexy
Talk about dancing maniacs, you can’t beat Mark Hayes.
A corpulent account executive in the team’s front office, Hayes debuted as Big Sexy during the otherwise lackluster 2006-07 season. Usually starting in his suit, white shirt and tie, Big Sexy tosses off his jacket as he grooves to modern R&B tunes before he pulls off his shirt and tie and rips his T-shirt from his abundant body. He’s not appearing at every home game anymore, but when he does Big Sexy often starts his show with the Ice Girls in Section 13 before rampaging down to the opponents’ bench to press his big belly against the plexiglass. Sometimes Hayes shakes it so hard he breaks it. On March 22, 2008, While performing his nightly dance routine and wearing heavy firefighter’s gear in honor of Firefighters’ Night, Big Sexy dislocated a shoulder while doing ‘the worm,’ one of his routine dance maneuvers. He was back at it a few weeks later, much to his doctor’s dismay. The Viking
Back in ’07, Big Sexy danced a duel with another Crunch character, The Viking, a big, bearded fan who routinely displays his spelling skills: “Give me a C…Give me an R…” A younger version of the helmeted Viking sometimes leads the cheer from Section 6 with the help of a vuvuzela, one of those obnoxiously monotoned plastic horns. Yep. Vuvuzelas and cowbells. That’s down-home hockey harmony!
Go Crunch!