FAIRBURY- Neb. -- Trey Porter is a Doane graduate and alumni but there is another thing he is now known for at the university. 

He was the school’s mascot, attending sporting events and being as silly as he could to get laughs and smiles from the crowd while in the suit.

As a Norfolk Senior High graduate, he immediately went to school at the New York Film Academy in California for a semester but didn’t want to stay.

He said coming to Doane was influenced by his now fiancé. When he came to Doane, it was an email that brought him to the mascot life.

“So like the summer before, the person who was in charge of the mascot at the time sent an email out to all the incoming freshman, ‘Hey, we need somebody to be the mascot, to do this’ and I was like, I’ve always wanted to do this. I’ve never gotten an email like this at high school,” said Trey Porter, former four year Doane mascot.

Porter was the mascot for all four years of his time at Doane, which gave him some time to become an experienced mascot.

While in the suit, Porter said he wasn’t nervous at all. 

“Not nervous at all. I love that kind of energy and just being able to hide myself and hide my face and become this cartoon character in real life, just gave me a lot of joy,” said Porter. “I loved being silly and making people laugh and have fun and that’s exactly what you have to do to be a great mascot.”

Despite his time as the mascot, Porter loves Doane and loves all the other opportunities he got along the way.

“I love Doane so much. I’m definitely always going to have a connection to Doane for being the mascot for that long but even everything else that I did at Doane; I worked at the radio station there for four years, loved my time, I joined a fraternity that they have a local greek system, Alpha Pi Epsilon, loved that. That connection is always going to be true there,” said Porter.

Now Porter is on to his post graduation life, but will never lose his ability to be the silly mascot character he once was at Doane. 

“It’s always going to be a very prideful thing with Thomas the Tiger there,” said Porter. “There is always going to be a part of me, that I can get in that suit at any time and it will all come right back.”

Porter has returned to a football game this season and loves to watch the new mascot entertain the crowd like he once did.