Who are they, those masked characters silently cheering on your favorite teams while entertaining the crowds from the sidelines? Since 2009, the mascots of many local sports teams have been brought to life by one man. He has been the Hamburglar, Skinny Cat, Sledge, Salty, Sharky and soon to be many others. For recent New Hanover High School graduate Anthony Floyd, the life of a mascot just fit.
“I played football for seven or eight years, tried acting and a few other things. But mascoting was just something that appealed to me,” Floyd said. “You have to be a certain type of person to do it and it just felt right.”
Floyd’s mascot career began when his parents, who organized the kids’ area at the Wilmington Riverfest every year, needed someone to wear the mascot suits provided to them, like the McDonald’s Hamburglar. After reluctantly accepting his volunteered role as the Hamburglar the first year, Floyd grew to love the idea of putting on mascot suits.
“I get to be whoever I want to be and no one knows who I am,” he said. “I get to be as crazy as I want to be, with limits of course.”
Starting at New Hanover High School as a freshman, Floyd was enrolled in a drama class taught by an instructor who was also the cheer coach and the connection was made. For four years, Floyd was the mascot for NHHS, which, as a side effect, helped him concentrate on school.
“I was always the class clown anyway, but when I started doing that I focused more in school because I had something to escape to during the week,” he said. “But then sometimes I would be sitting in class doing costume designs.”
Floyd used the older wildcat costume provided to him by the school for the first couple years, but then started to notice issues with the suit. After the new replacement suit began to chip and wear quickly, Floyd and his mascot partner, Kionte Fennell, decided to take matters into their own hands and create Skinny Cat.
“It was big and heavy, and I thought I could make a better suit than that,” Floyd said. “We made it work and we added elements we have not seen on other mascots, like his mouth moves and his ear twitches. Normal mascots can’t do that. He also weighs less than 30 pounds.”
In addition to the lighter head, Floyd shunned the full-body suit in favor of long-sleeved shirts and pants, allowing Skinny Cat a better range of motion to do maneuvers like flips.
While in school at NHHS, Floyd also picked up mascot jobs with the Wilmington Sea Dawgs, Wilmington Hammerheads, Wilmington Sharks and now at his current school, Cape Fear Community College. With so many different roles to play, often that means multiple changes for Floyd in a single day.
“If there is an appearance Sledge has to be at and Cape Fear Community College has to be at I have to change out and do two appearances at once,” Floyd said. “There would be points where I would have to be two to three mascots in a day.”
Floyd has learned the tendencies and preferences of each fan base in interacting with the fans and kids at the different sporting events. However, in every setting Floyd maintains his professionalism by being energetic, improvising and keeping silent, of course.
“I have had some crazy things happen in the suits,” Floyd said. “A little girl came up to me at the Hammerheads game the other day, handed me a bottle of hand sanitizer and asked me to do a magic trick. Kids remember that stuff.”
Although he has had some interesting experiences as a mascot, Floyd said he still has a bucket list of things he wants to do in a suit, like the iconic mascot jumping through a flaming hoop.
“That has always been something I had in mind, but Hanover wouldn’t let me do it,” he said. “I haven’t climbed any rock walls or been a part of any marriage proposals, yet, but it is all on the bucket list.”
Along with tackling new challenges in the suit, Floyd is also working to launch a mascot suit company with Fennell. The duo’s first production was the Skinny Cat suit and the second was an eagle suit for Noble Middle School. Made either on Floyd’s kitchen table or at his grandmother’s house, Floyd said the two suits took a lot of foam, fake fur, adhesive and long hours. Floyd and Fennell are also currently developing a third suit for another Wilmington company.
With the eventual goal of becoming a professional mascot, Floyd said he always hopes to bring as much energy and enthusiasm to whatever character he is portraying.
“You have to be wild, outgoing and energetic,” he said. “You leave an impression on the people you interact with, and every time you put that suit on, you have to go out there like it is your last time.”
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