UW Spiderman: The Man Behind the Mask
- Christian Lasher
- Oct 3
- 5 min read
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past three years you’ve surely seen a skin-tight Spider-Man suit on a mystery student in the front row at War Memorial Stadium, the Arena-Auditorium, or the Uni-Wyo Sports Complex.
Affectionately known as, “UW Spiderman," only his close friends know his true identity.
Sorry to disappoint, but you won’t learn it here. However, you will learn a little about the man who brought the University of Wyoming’s newest unofficial mascot to life in Laramie.
UW Spidey is Junior from Denver studying psychology. Unlike in the movies, he wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider and he didn’t wake up with “Spidey-Senses.” He had brought his costume before his freshman year to wear to a showing of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”
“My brother and my best friend all ordered costumes off Amazon to watch it. I ordered (the) Tom Holland (version,) my buddy ordered Toby Maguire, my brother had an Andrew Garfield (version) so we went.” I brought it to Laramie and during “Saddle Up” they had a showing of the Spider-Man movie so I put on the costume. I went to the movie and it was just a blast dude…people were taking pictures. Some dude said, ‘Do a backflip!’ I was learning gymnastics a little bit so I pulled out a backflip. He was recording and he sent it to Barstool Wyoming. It was their first post.”
After that, Spiderman met with his friends and decided they should do something with this new-found fame. UW Spiderman was born.
“We set up an Instagram page, went outside and took some pictures. And it became a thing so I ordered my first brown or black and yellow costume… and took pictures at some football games and volleyball games. We made a flyer for our Instagram page and put it up on some light posts. From there, it just kind of kept consistently growing and people loved it. As the years have gone by, I just wanted to continue doing it even though that friend group kind of fizzled out…it grew into this big cool thing that I wanted to do.”
So what are some unintended consequences from his stint as UW Spiderman?
“It's the reactions I get from kids and even college students. The kids see me and they're like ‘Oh my gosh that's Spider-Man!’ I truly think they believe that and that is one of the coolest things about it…I grew up watching and being inspired by every Spider-Man movie and being inspired by those characters because they were just the coolest in my eyes.”
“I’ve had a few kids cry, I've gotten high-fives, hugs, and pictures and that's just the thing I never really expected. With the college students, it has become kind of expected that I go to games. It's not even just normative, it's becoming an obligation.”
So, do your friends know about your alter ego?
“A lot of them not do not know and then most people that I don't know have no idea (who I am.) I was really strict about it to start, but as the years have gone by, I've been kind of more lenient with who I tell. My main thing is making sure that my face or my real name does not go out on social media. That ruins the magic…it ruins what the character is and my anonymity is and it's not like I hate who I am as a person, but there's a character, there's a psychological thing to it. You don't know who I am under the mask. There's a mystery to it, and once that is kind of revealed it kind of just dims me down to a person.”
The body suit can present some challenges when wearing the Spidey costume. He says going to the bathroom at games is a little difficult. So is eating and drinking and seeing out of the mask. “My eyesight is kind of construed. You think that Spider-Man has this cool Spider-Sense, but no, it's actually worse for my vision. I can barely see so I resort to looking at the game board a lot.”
“I have a lot of lens problems with this new costume. My lenses tend to pop off because they have magnets. They will fall off and I gotta make sure no one sees that because it does not look the prettiest when my lenses are off my mask.”
What is the future for UW Spiderman after graduation?
“To be honest, I haven't really thought about what I'm gonna do with Spider-Man. I’m still running through options on what I wanna do. I've just been kind of trying to figure it out on my own what would give me the best closure to this character. This has been a very prevalent thing every school year of mine and I've put a lot of time and I put a lot of money into this character.”
He plans to attend graduate school after his 4 years at UW. “I never want my (future) kids to have to want something. I want them to be able to have that opportunity so you know I wanna work a little bit harder for that. That's just me personally, but for Spider-Man, I don't know. I'm still running through the options to see what would be the most realistic or the most for my audience of what would be something that gives them closure to.”
He says he has thought about passing the torch to an underclassman when he graduates. But he adds, the financial investment has been quite substantial. He cites at least $1,000 in costumes, hats, and customization of the costumes. He says he would be more than happy to help give them resources and inside knowledge of what is expected.
“Everyone's journey starts somewhere and I don't want to just have someone hop in a thing that they're not all too familiar with, especially on the inside side of things. It's been very intricate and even in my Junior year there's still things that I've been workshoping to make it better. It's a very personal journey just because there's a lot of personal aspects to it. So handing the torch down (to someone) would be more of a conceptual thing than a physical thing.”
Luckily, we don’t have to worry about that for a while. He still has one more year of undergraduate work in Laramie.
While he prepares for Homecoming this weekend, UW Spiderman has one message for his fans. “I know it sounds so cliché, but just be kind and be authentic…that goes a long way and helps with interpersonal connection. Never be afraid because opportunities like this can happen out of nowhere.”
So if you see UW Spiderman this weekend at the War, give him a high-five and thank him for his passion. Maybe buy him a drink. He won’t be able to drink it, but it’s the thought that counts.
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