Fast-paced and hard-hitting, ice hockey is 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.
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 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 boys are back home on Saturday. Go Crunch!
