Sports Cribs crawl/run/swim/battle etc.

November 13th, 2009 | By Avery Rowlison | Section: Features

Meet Moose. Moose is actually a decorated elk head who doesn’t have any eyes—unless a yellow ping pong ball counts—and whose hairs can cure hangovers. He greets you as you walk into the white house at 1017 High St., better known as the White House and home to football players Ben Johnson ’10, Chad Christoff ’10, John Hereford ’10, Ryan Fletcher ’11 and Marc Heronemus ’11.

In addition to his living human housemates, Moose is accompanied by other mounted critters—the living room is a “lodge theme,” as Christoff said. This means that there are birds—especially owls— deer, elk, etc. all over the walls.

One species you may not find in the house regularly are ‘hippies,’ perhaps due to the “Hippies use back door” sign on the porch, which leads to a sign on the back door that says “Hippies use side door,”—but they don’t have a side door. “It’s just a trinket we’ve collected over the years—we don’t enforce it,” Christoff said.

This football house could not be complete without a monstrous television—or two, one of which is held to the ceiling with rope. And football is always on. “Monday night football is always a staple, and we get up early on Sundays to watch too,” Christoff said.

The house has a very strong community feel. They all play defensive positions, which adds to the sense of family in the house. They have a breakfast nook where they eat together most mornings, surrounded by a very large alcohol bottle collection that dates back four or five years. While their bottle collection suggests no shortage of alcoholic beverages, the boys rarely have milk because they go through it so quickly. “We have to get creative sometimes with our meals at the house,” Christoff said. “We go through a lot of mac ‘n’ cheese and ramen.”

When they aren’t playing football, the residents spend a considerable amount of their time playing bags—a game in which you toss bean bags through holes in a piece of plywood. The residents of White House have made their own Bags board, which is painted appropriately with the school emblem to show their school pride. Bags can now be played at night thanks to their new addition of outside flood lighting.

Beyond community building, the men spend time pursuing extracurricular activities—including teen literature. Hereford gets his kicks reading the Twilight books, all of which can be found piled on his desk looking well thumbed through. “I’m sad that the campus knows about this now,” Hereford said.

“[Hereford] doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it, so every now and then in the weight room, he’ll bring up some story about Bella,” Johnson explained.

There’s also a surprising amount of Harry Potter paraphernalia in the guys’ rooms, like Fletcher’s Emma Watson poster on his wall. But if they had to choose a house mascot, it wouldn’t be Harry, Bella or even Moose—it would be Fletcher. “At one point we decided to go play softball, and [Fletcher] showed up in a clown costume,” Johnson said.

Forget fantasy heroes and taxidermied animals—the five residents are the greatest characters of all.