Butch Reveals Identity In Center Ring

Normally, I’d defer to the judgment of the risk management folks in Washington State’s athletic and marketing departments, but this one deserves a second guess.

It seems that earlier this basketball season, a senior from Spokane named Garrett Thiemens - you know him as Butch the Cougar - wanted to rappel from the rafters of Beasley Coliseum before a game in hopes of stirring up the customers.

“It was denied,” Thiemens said. “Too dangerous.”

Prudent enough. But on Saturday night, Thiemens was given the OK to ambush his girlfriend, Stephanie Smith, with an engagement ring at center court during halftime of WSU’s raucous overtime victory over Cal - Thiemens’ last stunt as Washington State’s mascot.

Or possibly his last stunt, period.

Man, if you’re going to give a kid a rope, let him rappel with it, not hang himself.

In any case, you have to like Thiemens’ feel for the big finish, for just how far he could push the envelope before taking off the costume head and revealing his identity to the campus at large - or at small, if you’re talking about WSU basketball crowds.

“Putting on a cougar suit,” he said, “pretty much gives you license to do whatever you want.”

And he wasn’t referring to anything involving duct tape.

When asked why he became a Butch - there are, in fact, several who rotate suit duty - Thiemens’ best stab is that, given his uncostumed personality, “It just made sense.”

Well, the same goes for why the subject of the mascot which, on press row, tends to be studiously and jadedly ignored comes up now.

For three years, Thiemens has been catting around inCougnito at football games, fund-raisers, basketball games, banquets, volleyball games, charity functions, rallies, baseball games and Bloomsdays - giving up an average of 10 hours a week to the cause of school spirit and getting repaid in nothing but the smiles of little kids and blue-haired boosters.

In his tenure, he has surfed the Cougar wave at high tide in 1997 when the football team made its remarkable run to the Rose Bowl.

“I remember at the rally beforehand,” he said. “The football team came out and stood on stage and I got lifted on top of the shoulders of the offensive linemen. So I’m sitting above the team, leading the Cougar fight song in front of thousands of Cougar fans - more than I’d ever seen in one place away from home. It was just amazing. That was the pinnacle of being Butch for me.”

But he has also had to generate enthusiasm during the recent Death Valley Days - possibly the worst across-the-board sports years in school history.

It has, sometimes, been like trying to raise the Titanic with a fly rod - though with only a Coug’s-mouth view, Thiemens doesn’t necessarily see it that way.

“It’s easier to get people into the game when we’re up and winning,” he acknowledged. “But so many games have been close this year and it’s really easy to get the crowd going when it’s close. It’s heartbreaking when we lose at the last second, but you still see them there again the next week.”

As such, it could be hard for Thiemens to break with this alternate identity - so much has Butch become a part of him.

“There was a kid at a game once I kept messing around with - there weren’t many people at the game, and I kept going back to him,” Thiemens recalled. “Then after the game when I was out of suit, I went to a store and there was the same little kid. I kind of waved to him and he gave me a look like, `Who is that guy?’

“It was kind of embarrassing.”

Obviously, you can’t embarrass easily and still be Butch. As a high school student at North Central, Thiemens was big into things like the Groovy Shoes game and dress-up days - “I lived for those” - and has ingrained in his Butch a touch of slapstick and goofiness which he hopes to carry on after graduation.

That’s right. Butch wants to go pro.

Though he carries a 3.47 GPA in advertising and is due to graduate in May, Thiemens has been encouraged by another ex-Butch, Dave Stogdill, now the Seattle Seahawks mascot, to take his shtick to the next level - to see if he can slingshot steamed meat with the big boys.

“But I’ve got to finish school first,” he said. “If I do get hurt, what am I going to do?”

Yep. Always good to have a fall-back.

Still, it figures to be a little traumatic to give up the Cougar suit. Thiemens tends to talk about Butch in the third person, a buddy who just happens to be out of the room - perhaps an outgrowth of having to keep the identity secret for so long.

“In the last few weeks, I’ve told some people to get them there for the unveiling,” he said. “They all say, `Oh, we knew - it fits’ but I don’t think they really do.

“And I had to tell my girlfriend. Because it takes up so much of my time and I have to do it a lot at night, I think she’d get suspicious. I told her about four months into the relationship. She thought I worked an awful lot and was pretty broke for how much I worked.”

But she had no clue about Saturday night’s proposal - nor did Thiemens have any reservations, despite the bad karma at Friel Court this season.

“I think,” Thiemens said, “this is actually what she wanted.”

Turns out it was a slam dunk. It didn’t take her two seconds to say yes.

Now, of course, comes the issue of how Butch ever hopes to top that - short of rapelling from the ceiling.

“That,” Thiemens said, “is another Butch’s problem.”