During UFV’s New Student Orientation on August 30, incoming students stopped by The Cascade’s office to learn about who we are and what we do. As part of the Amazing Race: UFV Edition, we challenged them to come up with a headline and image for an article, so that we could select our favourite to expand into a full article. This was the selected idea. All of us at The Cascade would like to thank all the students who came in to meet us, and created a ton of hilarious headlines and awesome art.
Sasq’ets, the lovable Sasquatch who serves as UFV’s mascot, has been representing the school since 2010, and in that time has appeared at countless Cascades games, school functions, and community events. But who’s inside that adorably fluffy suit, watching us all from underneath Sasq’ets oversized head? The Cascade set our top investigative journalists on the case, and has uncovered a startling truth.
Our first clue that something was amiss came when we reached out to UFV for a comment. While such requests are normally welcomed, we received a curt response from an email address we’d never seen before, obfuscator@ufv.ca, that simply said “don’t.” Obviously, being the headstrong journalists that we are, we took that to mean “do” keep investigating, and as word-obsessed nerds who are overly proud of our voluminous lexicons, we knew that “obfuscator” meant someone who hides things. It seemed we had a cover-up on our hands.
We started our investigation in earnest by having one of our reporters follow Sasq’ets after a basketball game. He walked out of the Envision Athletic Centre, still in full costume, and headed towards the SUB. At first we thought he was parked there, but he continued past the building, climbing up the hill beside the SUB with surprising agility for someone in such a cumbersome costume. Our intrepid reporter hurried after him, scrambling up the hillside and getting more than a few scratches along the way. By the time our reporter reached the top, Sasq’ets was across the gravel parking lot, and entering the forest across the street. Clearly the person cheering on our athletes was no slouch of an athlete themselves.
Unfortunately, our reporter had not taken any of the advanced journalism courses yet, so their tracking skills were not up to par, and they were slow to follow Sasq’ets through the woods. However, the mascot’s oversized footprints and tufts of grey fur made a relatively easy trail, so even our novice woodsman of a reporter was able to stay on track. But what they found after an hour of stumbling around in the forest surprised us all. The Sasq’ets costume sat, neatly folded, in a small cave created by the roots of an overturned tree, the head resting neatly on top, staring ceaselessly into our reporter’s soul. The big footprints, shaped like the pads on the bottom of the costume, lead to the cave, but surprisingly, more big footprints lead away from it, these ones from a bare foot that must’ve been at least a size 22 shoe.
Scared witless, our reporter tentatively picked up the Sasq’ets costume’s head to examine it. Inside, they found another strange clue: more grey fur, not synthetic like that on the costume, but from a real creature. As they reached for the rest of the costume, they heard a rustling, and turned. There, standing behind them, was a towering creature, nine feet tall and covered in hair. Bigfoot, and this time not a costume. The reporter looked back at the costume, and realized that it was perfectly sized for the massive, ape-like beast.
Then Bigfoot let out a roar, and our reporter made the smart choice, fleeing for their life, dropping the mascot costume as they ran. Returning to UFV’s campus through the dark forest seemed like it took forever, but eventually they broke free of the trees, only then daring to look over their shoulder to see if they were being chased. They weren’t. The reporter hurried back into the SUB and up to The Cascade’s office, where they told the team everything.
We at The Cascade do not make accusations lightly, but we are confident in publishing this story: we have reason to believe that the UFV mascot, Sasq’ets, is actually Bigfoot in disguise, hiding in plain site. What his goals are we do not know, but to help get the story out, our reporter has been in talks with television production studios. A pilot has been written, and Netflix has optioned it for a potential nine-season run, with the working title Big Feet, Bigger Dreams: One Sasquatch’s Quest for Stardom. However, until we can verify the true intentions of our school mascot, we would advise all students to act normally around the disguised creature, so as not to tip him off that we know anything. We don’t think he can read. Or at least, this author sure hopes he can’t.
