Imagine you have the coolest job on campus—one where you perform for thousands of cheering fans, get a front-row seat to college sports’ most exciting games, and meet your school’s most famous alumni—but you can’t tell anyone about it. That’s the life of a college mascot.
For the students who suit up, the role is top-secret, and only revealed after they cross the graduation stage. “It’s almost Hannah Montana-esque,” says Emma Connelly, 22, a recently graduated Cocky (the University of South Carolina mascot). She’s one of three graduating USC mascots this year, and the only woman.
While the mascot world is primarily male-dominated, there are plenty of women inside the suits—most people just don’t realize it. However, social media is starting to change all that. Come cap and gown season, graduating mascots are dropping reveal videos that rack up over one million views, and the most popular ones are posted by women. Although there aren’t precise stats about the number of female mascots, Connelly likes to think that the number is growing, partly thanks to the viral videos.
To get a better sense of what really goes into leading this double life on campus, Women’s Health spoke with four graduating mascots. Each of them shares a behind-the-scenes take on their experience, the reasons they believe the long hours and sweaty days are well-worth it, and why no one should be surprised when they discover a woman is inside the suit.
The realities of mascot life aren’t so glamorous.
One thing unites all college mascots: the sweat. Unsurprisingly, it can get very hot in costume, so a little (or a lot) of perspiration is to be expected. Plus, a single football game can be a 12-hour commitment, so they’re in there for the long haul.
“My acne has never been worse,” says Abbey Armstrong, 23, who spent the past year suiting up as Hoosier for Indiana University while she was getting her master’s. Armstrong estimates she spent about 15 to 20 hours per week being Hoosier, similar to her schedule when she was previously on the rowing team.
This was IU’s first year with a mascot after nearly 60 years, so the team put a lot of prep work in. Armstrong, alongside the other men who portrayed Hoosier, practiced twice a week and spent even more time workshopping his identity. They essentially created a Hoosier character study forum via Slack, where they discussed the tiniest details of his life, like his major. (The answer: every major. He’s a forever college student, so he wants to study everything IU has to offer—from the most popular business offerings to animal behavior to musicology.)
They also spent some time trying to decide on Hoosier’s signature move. (Wisconsin’s Bucky the Badger stands on his head, for instance.) This year, it was the sprinkler, but the team is still searching for a move that they can make their own.
Allison Reid, 22, has spent four years in-costume as lioness Kate for her school, Hofstra University. During that time, she really committed to her role: Although she was also on the college’s Division I track and cross country teams, she’d get in costume 20 to 25 times per week. “I would go from sports to Kate to class to Kate some days,” she says.
While the Hofstra program isn’t as formal as IU’s, Reid put in a lot of hours on her own, learning new tricks and really developing what her mascot could do too. She’s proudest of teaching herself to balance on one foot while swinging Kate’s tail around, and adding a number new dance moves to her repertoire. “I downloaded TikTok just for when people would ask me if I could do the moves, or I if could do a TikTok with them.”
And, while mascots make all those moves look easy and graceful, it turns out dancing around in a giant suit is pretty challenging. Halfway through Reid’s tenure, the Kate costume was totally revamped, so the lion was more muscular—and, as result, a lot heavier. This meant she had to completely relearn how to move around in the suit, including figuring out how to hype up the crowd without being able to lift her arms all the way up anymore.
For mascots, learning to navigate the equipment is actually a big part of the training process. Trips and falls are an occupational hazard, and limited vision is a given. Meileen Taw, 22, who is a recent graduate from University of California, Los Angeles, says her Josie mascot suit basically left her with no peripheral vision and made it difficult to even see the ground. “If a little kid comes up to you, it's really hard to see them,” she says, but mascots must learn how to adapt. “You have to get down on your knees to interact with them.”
UCLA mascots do most of their training before the school year starts, so when she signed onto the team ahead of her senior year, Taw spent her summer getting acquainted with the suit and nailing different moves. The key, she says, is to make everything bigger than you would out of the suit. During the year, she spent about 15 hours per week as Josie—and that’s on top of classes, a job, and other club commitments.
Though it seems like these highly-scheduled mascots manage to do it all, sometimes they have to make sacrifices, too. For example, while Connelly loved going to elementary schools to read to children as part of USC’s Cocky’s Reading Express program—the required Friday morning early wakeup call meant going out on Thursday nights was not in the cards. She also planned all of her classes around her Cocky schedule.
Finally, being a mascot requires lot of stamina. Armstrong and Reid were college athletes in cardio-centric sports, but Armstrong says that her time training to be Hoosier got her even more familiar with a weight room. The team does something called an “arm farm”—a high volume, upper-body burner that works the biceps, triceps, and forearms. Connelly, similarly, was a dance major, so that kept her in cardio shape. Taw says she squeezed in her workouts by walking UCLA’s extremely hilly campus.
While they all mentioned they would be a mascot for free, it’s worth noting that most of them got paid, so it essentially doubles as an on-campus job. (UCLA does not pay its mascots; IU, Hofstra, and USC do.)
Keeping the secret is the biggest challenge.
For one thing: The gear is pretty hard to hide. At USC, Cockys keep their uniforms in their rooms, so Connelly had to lug it around campus. Sometimes, she’d claim it was hockey equipment, if anyone asked—but mostly she opted to sneak it out to her car at 4 a.m.
Really, the best way to keep the secret is with a few white lies. Taw was also on her school’s spirit squad, so when friends would ask her where she was going, she’d reply, “the game!” If anyone said they didn’t see her cheering, she could confidently say, “I was there.”
Reid mastered the art of slipping in and out of her Kate costume multiple times per day. As an exercise physiology student, she also worked as an athletic trainer intern for the men’s lacrosse teams. Some days, she’d head to the athletic center to help the players prep for the game, leave to be Kate while they competed, and then return as herself to help clean up.
Armstrong would simply say she worked in marketing for IU’s sports teams. Really, though, what helped is that most people never suspected Hoosier would be portrayed by a woman, so they never even questioned her in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of women suiting up to be college mascots.
While some schools like Hofstra and UCLA have both male and female mascots (there’s a Willie to Reid’s Kate and a Joe to Taw’s Josie, for example), others have just one, which often has he/him pronouns. As women like Connelly and Armstrong make their reveals, they’re mostly met with excitement—but there are a few detractors surprised that a woman could be in the role.
Hoosier is explicitly a man. Part of the learning curve for Armstrong was practicing being more bro-y to fit the persona. That included walking more like a man and learning how to dap people up—something she still hasn’t quite mastered. To be Hoosier, you also need to be between 5’10 and 6’1—simply to fit into the costume—which isn’t as common for women.
Beyond the he/him pronouns that lead people to assume there’s a man underneath the mascot suit, there’s also an inherent level of sexism at play. “People will be like, ‘I can't believe that was a girl in there running around in that heavy suit,’” Connelly says. “Well, yeah, it was. Why would it not be?” Since her reveal, multiple women have messaged her on social media saying that they had no idea they could even try out to be Cocky, to which Connelly replied with the contact info to get them started.
“I think it's been a really great experience to open up this conversation about women in sports,” Armstrong says about her reveal. “I don't think people were talking about women mascots as much until now, and I've always been in the business of trying to promote women's sports and women in the athletic landscape.” (Armstrong recently completed her master’s in nonprofit management at IU, but her next stop is law school where she hopes to get into sports law to work on Title IX and support female athletes.)
As more women go viral for mascot reveals, it’s opening the door for new opportunities.
Since her reveal, Armstrong, who grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, has become a hometown hero of sorts. In just one day, three people asked her for a picture—out of costume.
But even before the big unmasking, Armstrong says being a college mascot opened the door to so many incredible experiences. This year, she got to travel to the Peach Bowl with the football team, meet IU’s Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza, and hop behind the counter at a Starbucks to make a drink. “They really let you do a lot when you’re in the suit,” she laughs.
For Taw, the highlight was traveling to support UCLA women’s basketball in the Final Four in Phoenix. Whereas, Reid loved developing a relationship with the pep band, complete with the honor of playing tambourine for them as Kate. After her reveal, she’s been invited back to step in—as herself, this time.
Overall, though, these recent grads will tell you it’s the little moments that are most exciting for a mascot. It’s all the times they’re interacting with unsuspecting classmates, parents of childhood friends, department heads, and, in the case of Taw, Love Island stars.
They each put so much care into creating special memories for every kind of fan—the college students who camped out for student seats, the aging alumni dressed head-to-toe in gear, the kids meeting a mascot for the first time. “Every mascot makes somebody smile,” Connelly says. “A community college mascot matters just as much as the mascot for the Buffalo Bills. The whole point of it is bringing joy, and so I think having a community of mascots, especially a community of female mascots, is really an awesome thing.”
Olivia Luppino is an associate editor at Women’s Health and a RRCA-certified run coach. She spends most of her time interviewing expert sources about the latest fitness trends, nutrition tips, and practical advice for living a healthier life. Olivia previously wrote for New York Magazine’s The Cut, PS (formerly POPSUGAR), and Salon, where she also did on-camera interviews with celebrity guests. She ran the New York City Marathon in 2025 and is training to run it again in 2026.
