TEMPE, Ariz. — Go to an ASU football game, there he is, doing pushups for touchdowns. Go to a basketball game, he’s in the Curtain of Distraction. Hockey, he’s on the boards.
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Sparky the Sun Devil is everywhere ASU is. But no one knows who’s in the suit.
It’s a closely held secret, like characters at Disneyland…you ARE Sparky when you’re in the suit. Mascots reveal their identity to no one…until they graduate.
And after three and a half years, Sparky has graduated…and Sparky was a woman the whole time.
“My finger was shaking over the post button on Instagram,” Sydney Lindon-Lake said. “I’ve never told anyone this information before!”
Lindon-Lake has been Sparky for the past three and a half years, being the face of Arizona State University, all without telling anyone.
“This is something I’ve been able to keep under wraps for the past three and a half years,” she said. “And it’s been a hard secret, but when you love something so much, you’re willing to do anything for it.”
She says even her closest friends tried to figure it out. Some wondered how she saw the football game without anyone seeing her.
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Turns out she had the best seat in the house.
“I’ve had friends who have tried to fry me and I’m like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Lindon-Lake said.
The ASU softball team even made a game out of it, trying to guess her identity from the dugout. No one guessed correctly.
Lindon-Lake is only the second woman in ASU history to wear the Sparky costume. This year, several high-profile mascot reveals at major universities have shown that a surprising number of big school mascots have been women all along.
A TikTok video showing this year’s mascot reveals includes schools like Ohio State’s Brutus Buckeye, the Kansas Jayhawk, Indiana’s Hosier the Bison…all women.
“I was getting phone calls every two minutes, like, ‘Sydney, oh my gosh, you’re Sparky?'” she said.
Now that she has graduated with a degree in Communications, Lindon-Lake will hand over the pitchfork and pursue a career in sports entertainment. But being Sparky is something that will never leave her.
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“It’s been such an honor and such a privilege,” she said.