Super Fans!Oregon State Beaver Believers taking fandom to the next level.

Oregon state faithful have stood by stood by the beavers through every high and low — from notorious losing streaks to heart-pounding wins to Olympic podiums. Through it all, they’ve shown up, loud and proud, to cheer with friends and celebrate what it means to be part of Beaver Nation. But there are fans and there are superfans. In a world where college sports seems always to be in flux, we went on a quest to find some of the special people at the heart of school pride — the ones taking fandom to the next level. Still, this is just a small sampling. Know a superfan? Tell us about them here.

Mr. Beaverman

Marvin Yonamine, ’87

IG: @MarvinBeaverMan

Location: Mililani, Hawaii

Occupation: Retired Teacher

Marvin Yonamine knows what it’s like to love a sport that doesn’t love you back. As a student, he endured Oregon State Football’s record-breaking 28-year losing streak. He told friends that if the university ever had a winning season, he’d wear Beaver gear nonstop. The streak ended in 1999. On Jan. 1, 2001 — the day OSU trounced Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl — Yonamine kept his word. By the time you read this, he will have worn Beaver shirts for more than 9,000 days in a row.

Courtesy of @MarvinBeaverMan

Fifteen years in, Daily Barometer reporter Josh Worden, ’17, discovered the Twitter account (there’s now an Instagram account, too), where Yonamine documents his daily exercise in Beaver pride. “From there,” Yonamine says, “it just took off.” He’s been celebrated by OSU teams, met former OSU president Ed Ray and was even written up by The New Yorker. But he wants to be clear: “People think a university is only its sports. And I really hate that,” he says. “Being a college sports fan is only 25% of my love for OSU. The other 75% is my love for the whole university.” He met lifelong friends and his wife, Laurie Satomi Yonamine, ’87, here. (As first-year students inbound from Hawaii, they sat together outside the Eugene airport for four hours waiting for a shuttle.) His father, daughters and son are Beavers, too. “You should be proud of your university, not only in the good times, but also in the bad times,” he says. “I thank all those Oregonians who sat through 28 losing seasons, and they still supported OSU.”

Cookie Man

LU RATZLAFF, ’78

Location: Corvallis, Oregon

Occupation: Former owner of Schaefers Recreation Equipment/ Schaefers Stove & Spa

You might know Lu Ratzlaff for his dyed-orange game-day beard or his years of outrageous tailgating. (For the 2000 rivalry game, he towed a hot tub to Reser and set it up in the parking lot.) But the most important work of his fandom happens in the kitchen with Imperial butter and bag upon bag of chocolate chips. For more than two decades, Ratzlaff has baked cookies for all the baseball team’s home and away games, and for the gymnastics team to boot — more than 10,000 cookies a year. It began as a way to say thank you to an athletic trainer who hooked him up with a special helmet decal, and somehow just kept going.

Lu Ratzlaff in 2018 at the College World Series game against University of North Carolina.

Many celebrity helpers have tied on an apron in Ratzlaff’s kitchen, from players to former OSU president Ed Ray and his wife, Beth Ray. Since Ratzlaff encountered health troubles recently, his wife, Dori Ratzlaff, ’78, helps more, along with a volunteer baking crew that comes every Thursday morning. Why has he kept it going this long? He’s in it for the fun, he says, but it’s now also part of OSU baseball tradition. “When Mitch took over, he was going to quit the cookies, because he wanted healthier things,” Ratzlaff says of Mitch Canham, ’11, the Pat Casey Head Baseball Coach. “The thing is, the first game that he was coaching, they had a rally cookie late in the game, and they rallied and won. He said, ‘[Redacted], we’re keeping the cookies!’”

Keepers of the Dam Flag

Andy Lake, ’81

Location: Denver, Colorado

Occupation: Owner, IAG Packaging

Todd Butler, ’87

Location: Elkmont, Alabama

Occupation: Retired Senior Operations Planner, U.S. Army

After the Pac-12 as we knew it disintegrated in 2022, leaving Oregon State and Washington State behind, Todd Butler had an idea. Washington State fans had waved their flag on ESPN’s College GameDay broadcasts since 2003. In the name of solidarity, he thought, Oregon State should be there, too. That weekend’s show was in Alabama. Butler bought a flag, got in his car and drove. Afterward, he posted photos on the Beaver Blitz message board and posed a question: Can someone in Colorado do the same next week? “I saw that and I thought, ‘That’s really cool,’” says Andy Lake. In that moment, a homegrown Beaver movement was born. With advice from the WSU group; help from the OSU Alumni Association; and, soon, social media coordination by Ben Forgard, ’12, the effort took off. Butler and Lake started shipping flags from fan to fan. They haven’t missed a single broadcast in the two seasons since.

It’s really cool to see our flag flying next to Washington State’s ol’ crimson.

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With locations announced just a few days in advance, sometimes that means scrambling to book last-minute flights across the country. “Number one, we’re diehard Beaver fans,” Lake says. “After the pain of what happened to us and the Pac-12, you can either curl up in a ball and just give up or you can do what we’re trying to do, which is to get people motivated and get the Beaver flag noticed on national TV.” To grow the tradition, Butler created custom tokens and certificates for volunteers who sign up to wave the flag. “Through all the years ESPN GameDay has been on, it’s been part of Saturday mornings,” Butler says. “But to see it live and feel the energy — when you get a crowd that’s really fired up, you can feel it in your chest, the noise. It’s really cool to see our flag flying next to Washington State’s Ol’ Crimson. It’s also a little bit of a poke in the eye to ESPN, who contributed to this destruction.”  Get involved here.

The Collectors

Susan Mayer Schmidt, ’64 and the late Bob Schmidt

Location: Corvallis, Oregon

Occupation: Retired Realtor

For nearly 50 years, Susan Mayer Schmidt and her late husband, “Beaver Bob” Schmidt, never missed a football game — home or away. They tailgated with the same crew for 38 years, had season tickets to multiple Oregon State sports and built what might be the most jaw-dropping Beaver memorabilia room there is. Every inch of the couple’s sunken family room bursts with orange: 376 vintage pins and buttons; 202 ornaments, bracelets and keychains; 32 hats, including an OSU Santa hat, a beaver-head hat, and two original rook lids (“I probably snatched one of those off of someone’s head at Bonfire!” she says). Plus, there are autographed photos and footballs; collages of iconic OSU sports moments; pennants; stuffed animal and figurine beavers; and even a neon “Beaver Bob” sign. “I wish I could remember how this started,” she says. “We’d go to a game, find something cute and bring it home.”

Some of her favorites? A hula-dancing beaver found at a Honolulu swap meet during their 1999 Oahu Bowl trip and a newspaper clipping from an early ’80s college football prediction contest where she ranked in the top three. Schmidt was the only woman to place then, just as, for years, she was the only woman on the Beaver Club Board. (She served with the booster club’s leadership for 15 years.) Now a retired real estate agent, she laughs when recalling a home full of teddy bears she once showed: “I thought, ‘How can anyone live like this?’ Then I hit myself on the forehead and said, ‘I do live like this!’” For her, fandom has always been about friends and, above all, fun. “I keep telling the gripers around me that they’re kids playing a game!” she says. “I just love watching them play.”

Mama Heckers

Sharon Heckers

Location: Corvallis, Oregon

Occupation: Retired

You might not have seen Sharon Heckers in the stands, but if you attend home football games, you’ve witnessed her influence on the field. Better known as “Mama Heckers,” she’s been ensuring that the roughly 300 members of the OSU Marching Band are fueled up and ready to play since 1999. It all started when her daughter, Kristin Heckers, performed with the Color Guard. (Now she’s the Color Guard’s instructor and choreographer.) Sharon took a look at what they were eating and said, “We can do this a lot better and a lot cheaper.”

Anytime anybody needs a hug or just wants to talk, I’m there for them.

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So she built an all-volunteer operation to acquire and serve nutritious food — like baked potatoes with all the fixings or a pick-your-toppings pasta bar. Game days for the band start five hours before kickoff and continue until the final strains of “Carry Me Back to OSU.” The food crew begins even earlier, setting up in the Truax Indoor Practice Center. They’ve got it down to an art: two meal shifts, each in and out in half an hour. “I believe in the students. They’re like my kids,” Heckers says. Knowing they’ve had one good meal makes the long hours worth it. (Until last year, on top of everything, she drove nearly three hours from Grants Pass). But that’s not the only reason she’s called “Mama.” “Anytime anybody needs a hug or just wants to talk, I’m there for them,” she says.

Sharon Heckers feeds the marching band at a September 2023 game. (Photo by Blake Brown)

Heckers considers herself a sports fan, but also a fan of music and its crucial role in making game days come alive. “I think that sometimes it’s taken for granted that the band is there.” She says with a laugh: “I like to say, the football team’s just on the band field for a while.”

The Beaver Behind Enemy Lines

Alan Thayer, ’81

Location: Eugene, Oregon

Occupation: Business Lawyer

Alan Thayer practices law deep in Duck country — but step inside his office in Eugene, and it’s all orange. As he says: “We’re doing what we can to spread the Beaver faith here in Lane County.” After local Beaver Club meetings ended, Thayer wondered for years how to regain that sense of community. Then clients started having trouble with employees “doing stupid stuff on social media.” Maybe, he thought, he could learn more about Facebook and promote Oregon State at the same time. The Beavers Behind Enemy Lines Facebook group launched in 2012. At 9,400 members strong and growing, it could be bigger. “Unlike a lot of other groups, we actually investigate each and every person,” he says. “These are real Beaver fans. These aren’t fake accounts. And it’s been a pretty cool thing.” The goal is an “online refuge for Beaver fans wherever they may be” without the negativity that too often consumes social media. That takes time. Quite a lot of time.

Even with two other moderators, Thayer is at it at least two hours a day. The reward is a community that some coaches and even players’ families feel comfortable in. “When someone is wanting to trash a player, I think of those people,” he says. “Would the person who made the comment say that directly to the player’s mother?” Most people just need a reminder to be kind. “There are people who are great contributors who started off negative,” he says, “and then they mellow out.” All the effort seems to be working. A few days after OSU’s College World Series run ended, outfielder Gavin Turley’s dad posted a long, heartfelt thank you. “Through … the great moments and the hard ones — you stayed. And you loved him,” he wrote. Thayer says that’s exactly how a Beaver community should be. After all, sports are important, but they’re not the most important thing. “It’s really the people,” he says.

The Dam Builders

Shelby Poggio

Location: Corvallis, OR

Occupation: Rising Junior

Nick Abele

Location: Corvallis, OR

Occupation: Rising Junior

Most alumni remember the electricity of the student section — the roar of the crowd, the teeth-rattling exhilaration of chanting and cheering together. Back in the day, the Rally Squad led the action. Now, it’s the Beaver Dam Leadership Council. Reestablished in 2022 after a pandemic hiatus, it offers application-based, paid positions to about four students who want to turn their love of sports into professional experience. Rising juniors Nick Abele and Shelby Poggio, marketing students in the College of Business, meet weekly with OSU Athletics to strategize ways to make games fun. How can they build excitement on social media? What student giveaway item will be so iconic that it will be kept as a souvenir for years? Sure, they’ve seen changes, from the dissolution of the traditional Pac-12 when they were first-years to the continual loss of players through the transfer portal.

But Abele doesn’t begrudge players his age who do what they think is best for their careers. “It makes you appreciate the ones that stay even more,” he says. “But I have a hard time finding fault in those that choose to pursue other opportunities that they’ve been given.” Poggio agrees. Her advice for fans grappling with the new reality is this: “I would just try to remember that little kid in you that just enjoys it.” She notes: “School is hard. You’re trying to navigate all these new changes and living on your own. It’s a lot of new learning curves, but being able to be a fan, honestly, changes people. You find a home and a community, and that’s something that some people don’t ever have if they don’t get that college experience. It just feels like having a huge family, a big forever home.”

Oregon Stater presents: OSU Superfans: Celebrate fandom this Homecoming at an immersive experience highlighting the passion of Superfans, Saturday, Oct. 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at the Alumni Center at Oregon State. Record your fan story on a vintage phone, take themed photos, view Superfan bios, make a superfan button and enjoy free giveaways. Learn more.