Being Jonathan
Everyone knows mascots can’t talk — even our beloved Jonathan the Husky. Their identities are a closely guarded secret.
But all bets are off upon graduation. Turning the tassel loosens the muzzle, and former mascots are free to speak about their experiences.
By Craig Burdick ’96 (CLAS), ’01 (ENG)
A dozen alumni sat with us and shared their stories of being Jonathan. From heartwarming to face-pounding, Jonathan has seen and done it all over 60 years. And while he never started a fight, he finished a few.
“I mean, let’s face it, it’s a crazy kind of thing to do,” says former Jonathan Joe Briody ’86 (BUS), ’95 MA, ’96 Ph.D. “It’s a very unique role to play on campus.”
Fight, Fight, Connecticut
They say it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. With the Seton Hall Pirate already sporting an eye patch, he could almost be forgiven for not seeing what was in store after provoking our mascot in the Field House.
It was 1983, and Nick Zaharias ’85 (CLAS) and the Pirate had agreed to perform a fake fight at one end of the basketball court. Fake.
“If you notice in the photo, he had the Seton Hall flag in our gym, which he shouldn’t have been doing to begin with. He had it on a piece of lumber and he came up unannounced behind me and hit me on the back of the head. He actually cracked the Husky dog head.
“I immediately turned around and grabbed him and said, ‘What are you doing? This wasn’t our plan.’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.’”
Zaharias walked away — but then the Pirate hit him again, this time even harder.
“That’s when I kind of lost it. I’m like, well, that’s it. This is our turf. This is not going to stand.
“So I turned around and just started throwing punches and then he started throwing punches, but he had a rubber mask on and I had the big head. I think I took the flag off and threw it in the crowd. The crowd went nuts.
“And then I walked away like Rocky.”
That is, until the next day when then–athletic director John Toner called Zaharias to his office.
“It’s kind of funny because you see behind us that people are realizing, ‘Oh, this is for real. This is no longer a fake mascot fight,’” says Nick Zaharias ’85 (CLAS) of his infamous row with the Seton Hall Pirate.
Nick Zaharias’ Rocky Moment
“He said, privately, ‘That was pretty cool. You protected the pride. But I gotta do something.’ So I had a little punishment. I think a friend had to be the Husky dog for one game or something like that.”
A couple of years later, Ray Shaw ’86 (CAHNR), ’02 MS took down the St. John’s mascot during a men’s basketball game in the Hartford Civic Center.
Late in the second half, with the visitors beating UConn badly, the opposing mascot approached Jonathan and suggested some lewd and unprintable theatrics. Shaw, knowing the crowd was watching, pushed him away with an exaggerated double hand wave.
“Then he comes over to me and reaches his hand out like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ So I go to shake his hand and he grabs me, and I say to myself, ‘This is it. It’s on.’”
With the St. John’s mascot pulling on the securely tied Husky head, Shaw wrestled him to the court, where they rolled beneath the basket until referees separated them. Shaw, still on the court, looked up — and straight into a video camera piping the whole thing into the Jumbotron.
“I did the first thing that came to mind: I put my arms up in a double bicep flex, and the crowd went absolutely nuts.”
The next morning, like Zaharias before him, Shaw found himself in John Toner’s office. Shaw was also suspended for a game.
To the Foe
Stealing the mascot was a thing among college rivals back in the day, whether it was the live animal or the human counterpart. Yale had come close to kidnapping the costumed Jonathan at least once.
In 1980, UMass succeeded — sort of.
Weeks before a UConn-UMass football game, the opposing band learned the identity of Jonathan the Husky: John Briody ’82 (BUS), Joe’s older brother. “Operation Huskectomy” (their title) involved UMass students impersonating Harvard Medical School researchers and concocting a phony study into the personality and behavioral traits of mascots. The day before the game, a video crew visited Storrs and interviewed Briody for half an hour in The Suit as he greeted students and fans. When the “researchers” suggested they celebrate their collaboration at a bar, Briody, knowing he couldn’t have dinner in costume, left The Suit in the car of the “Harvard researchers.” Minutes into dinner, the hosts dropped the act:
“Right about now, your Husky costume is crossing the state line of Massachusetts, and it’s on its way up to the University of Massachusetts,” Briody recalls them saying, and they gave him a choice: You can go back to your dorm, tell the cheerleaders what happened, and ride with them to the game tomorrow with nothing. Or you can come to UMass with us tonight and party with the band as we watch your video. Briody chose option two.
“I got literally and figuratively taken for a ride,” he says.
It’s Vict’ry
Briody more fondly remembers the match that sent the men’s soccer team to the 1981 NCAA championship game.
“I went up to the athletic director [Toner again], who was sitting on the sidelines, and I was pleading with him,” says Briody. On his knees in the costume, Briody “was begging him. He knew I was asking if I could go to the game without saying any words. And he looked at me and he said, ‘Come up to my office on Monday morning and we’ll talk about it.’”
On Monday, Toner said yes. So Briody flew to Palo Alto, California, and cheered his Huskies to their first men’s soccer title.
Before Storrs could become the Basketball Capital of the World, UConn had to win its first hoops championship.
Few people can say they had a better view of the 1995 women’s basketball title game than Bryan Garver ’97 (CLAS) as Jonathan. In the closing minutes, Garver remembers being directly in the field of vision of Carla Berube ’97 (CLAS) as she shot pivotal free throws.
“I put my head down, kind of crouched down so she couldn’t see me because my worst fear was that she was going to miss the free throws,” says Garver.
“That we were going to lose the game and in the press conference she was going to say, ‘That damned mascot distracted me, and I couldn’t hit the free throw.’”
Tom Murawski ’09 (CLAS) lucked out and wore The Suit for two big games: UConn football’s win in the 2009 International Bowl in Toronto, Canada, and the women’s basketball NCAA championship three months later in St. Louis.
In St. Louis, the Huskies won their sixth national title, and Murawski was swept up in the dizzying pace of celebration that lasted through the rally at Gampel Pavilion the next afternoon. “I don’t remember the bus really hitting the brakes between Bradley Airport and Gampel,” says Murawski. “We had a nonstop police escort.”
As they approached Storrs, everyone on the bus wondered: Would the Exit 68 sign include last night’s title? “I remember everyone looking out the window to see whether or not it was updated — and it was!”
What’s better than a police escort? How about getting chauffeured to shoot a commercial.
A native of Perth, Australia, Greg Waddell ’02 (CLAS) tried out to be Jonathan because he loved American collegiate culture. “One of the things that makes it special is sports and competition and the camaraderie that comes with that,” Waddell says. And besides, “the Husky is a friendly mascot.”
Waddell remembers getting picked up “in a limo from the old Kappa Sig house on Gilbert Road by Arjona early one morning and being flown first-class to Atlanta for an ad for Marriott Hotels,” says Waddell. “The theme was ‘checking in to the Final Four,’ and I was alongside three other mascots.”
Waddell’s Jonathan also starred in a TV spot for ESPN Zone restaurants.
Promotional appearances have taken Jonathan all over, including to check in to a pet-friendly hotel room (under the alias Greg Waddell) with other mascot buddies in a Marriott TV spot.
“You were really part of it, and you were included. It was really special,” says Waddell of the mascot’s role in the 2000 women’s basketball title. That’s his championship ring pictured above.
Let’s Go!
Few things are as synonymous with Jonathan as the Husky Slide. While it’s now banned (apparently due to safety concerns), nobody seems to know who invented it — although we found at least two people who claim credit.
“I joke with people that I started the Husky Slide because I couldn’t get a grip on the floor if I ran out to do a cartwheel,” says Ray Shaw (of flex-cam fame).
“I definitely did it in every game. You might talk to another Husky dog who did the Husky Slide, but I go back to ’84, and until someone claims it from before me, I’ll say that I invented it.”
Meanwhile, Shaw’s classmate Joe Briody swears it was his idea. He performed his favorite Slide at Madison Square Garden.
“One of the camera guys that used to kneel underneath the hoops to film the game for TV came over and said, ‘Hey, at some point can you do the Slide? I want to get it on video,’ and I was like, ‘Of course.’”
When the time came, Briody ran to the opposite end of the 92-foot-long court and started charging toward the cameraman.
“At the top of the key I jumped, and I hit the slide. And I’m sliding across the court and I’m looking out these eyes and I realize I’m going kind of fast, I don’t have any control. Well, I bowled right into the cameraman and flipped him over on his back. And we’re fumbling around and I’m trying to get off of him and I broke code and I said, ‘I’m so sorry!’ And he goes, ‘No, I got it all! That was the greatest!’”
Husky Slide
Joe Briody Recounts His Favorite Husky Slide
One perk of donning The Suit? Love letters from young Husky fans, like the one, top, given to Zaharias, and the “really awesome” drawing handed to Harrison, right.
One perk of donning The Suit? Love letters from young Husky fans, like the one, top, given to Zaharias, and the “really awesome” drawing handed to Harrison, bottom.
Tom Harrison: The best part of being the mascot
For the White and Blue
Jonathan’s face is locked in a smile while the face of the person inside is hidden from view. That’s a good thing when fighting, but it can get in the way of conveying heartfelt appreciation. For a decade, Tom Harrison ’16 (BUS) has cherished a drawing from a young fan.
“I think it might have been a 6-year-old that came over and said, ‘Hi, Jonathan. I love you so much,’ and gave me the picture,” recalls Harrison. “I couldn’t say, ‘Thank you so much,’ but I gave him a big hug. Then I handed it to a cheerleader and whispered: ‘Please make sure you hold on to this because this is really something special. Like, really awesome.’”
Children also loved Joe’s daughter Caitlin Briody ’17 (CLAS) when she suited up for casual campus events and meet-and-greets. “I remember being swarmed by a huge group of elementary school kids who were so excited to meet Jonathan,” says Briody. “They were pulling on the tail and trying to stick their hands in the mouth. They truly didn’t realize there was a person inside! It was a challenge to manage all that attention playfully and silently — without laughing.”
Perhaps there was another reason kids were drawn to her. “I’m shorter than most mascots and smaller than The Suit is designed for. That made it challenging to move in The Suit,” she says. “I was too short to see out of the eyes, so all my vision was through the mouth. I was always nervous that people would see me and feel cheated, like they weren’t getting the ‘real’ Jonathan.”
It turns out her slight stature made her stand out in an unexpected way.
“I can’t tell you how many times people saw me and yelled, ‘It’s a puppy!’ They thought it was really cute. They were happy to meet Jonathan in whatever version he came in. That meant a lot to me.”
Love Story
Becoming Jonathan rewires the brain
Hugs, fist and hip bumps, and of course high-fives are standard Jonathan love language.
“My wife [Meredith Trotta ’92 (CLAS)] and I had our first date when I was a senior,” says Dan Parzych ’93 (CLAS). “She was animated and talking with her hands. At the time I was doing so many events as Jonathan and doing so many high-fives that we’re sitting across the table and she’s talking and I keep high-fiving her because my brain just keeps doing high-fives.
“She loves telling that story, too, about how it’s probably still my personality, but it’s not engineered into my nervous system anymore to high-five everybody all the time.”
Maybe not. But it’s definitely still his personality.
Over the course of a 30-minute video chat, Parzych, wearing a Husky Slide T-shirt, grew more animated and more amped up the longer he spoke about his time as Jonathan.
“Being in Gampel in that suit, having there be a time-out and the whole crowd is cheering for you and you just go and do, like, five or six Husky Slides in a row, or being kind of like a hidden celebrity, where you walk around and you’re high-fiving people. I mean, you can’t bottle that up. I wish I could,” says Parzych. “You can see how excited I am, and it’s been 30 years. There’s nothing like that.”
“It allowed you to be this whole other persona, or to exaggerate your existing persona, you know, in the safety of a suit,” says Joe Briody.
Becoming an Emblem
Dan Parzych on how it feels to become Jonathan
Symbol of Might
Matthew Perreault ’11 (CLAS) earned his master’s degree at Louisiana State University and drove to New Orleans when the UConn football team visited Tulane in 2014 or 2015. In search of tailgating, he found a UConn tent and chatted up the 60-something fans. It somehow came up, as it often does with mascots, that Perreault had been a Jonathan — and a fan’s eyes lit up.
“‘Oh, yeah,’” Perreault recalls the guy saying. “‘I brought my daughter to a basketball game for her birthday and she met Jonathan.’
“And I’m thinking, that was during my time as the mascot. And I’m like, I remember that game, I remember meeting her. We were going through the concourse at the exact same time, and he said they had just gotten some concessions and then said it was the girl’s birthday.
“To put that together and see the impact it had. It was something they remembered, and it happened four or five years prior. It was so cool.”
A year ago, when his son was considering colleges, Bryan Garver — who had felt the heat in the moments before Berube iced a game — brought his family from Colorado to a UConn–Notre Dame women’s basketball game in Gampel.
After the game, says Garver, “My son told my wife: ‘I get it now. I couldn’t really understand why the mascot was such a big thing, but watching the mascot here, and watching how the crowd interacts with him, I get it.’ That was quite a moment when I heard that my son said, ‘My dad was kind of a big deal.’”
After all, being Jonathan is like being a superhero.
“It’s really special because you’re not you when you’re the mascot, you’re something more,” says Patrick Briody ’20 (CLAS), ’21 MS, who was the fourth in his family to wear The Suit, following his uncle John, father Joe, and sister Caitlin. “It’s special because you can take off The Suit and pass it down, and no one’s ever gonna know. But that symbol is still going to be there. It’s like Batman.”
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