Decker, Sarles elevate heckling opposing teams to an art form

At first glance, Chris Decker '98 and Dan Sarles '98 look to be the jesters of Jadwin Gym. Their faces painted orange, their heads crowned with flowing Tiger wigs, the duo has taunted visiting basketball squads at nearly every home game for the past two years.

Tuesday's Penn game was no different. An hour before tipoff, Decker and Sarles were already on the offensive. "Hey, how many of you have been in jail recently?" Sarles yelled. "How many of you guys are on parole?"

But the pair is about more than loud antics, catchy cheers and scorching outbursts. Just as Steve Goodrich '98 and Mitch Henderson '98 have honed their "system" through practice, Decker and Sarles are careful students of their own game. They have transformed trash-talking into an art.

The goal is to make opposing players lose their concentration or at least stumble for a moment. "If I can get in the other team's head, that's one less thing (Princeton) will have to do," Decker said.

In a gym full of other distractions, however, it takes a special skill to find the "ideal moment" to gain a particular player's attention, Sarles noted.

Once that moment arises – such as in the seconds after a free throw – Decker and Sarles are relentless on the attack, finding a quirk in a player's personal life or a flaw in his physique with which to rattle him.

Interviewed before the Penn game, the pair were quick to name their favorite traits in opposing players: bad haircuts, pulled-up socks, untucked shirts, out-of-style sneakers and receding hairlines. "Something they really can't control," Sarles explained.

"It's the Ivy League," he added, "so you've got a lot of goofy looking guys."

But the two have taken name-calling to a more sophisticated level than merely commenting on appearance. They scour media guides for more subtle ammunition, learning who has gut majors and where the team has faltered in the past.

"If you can bring in a player's personal life, they don't expect it. And, anything they don't expect, it gets to them," Decker said.

In addition, the duo targets specific players, hoping to take top opposition players out of their games. "You pick on their star player because he's bound to not have as good of a game against Princeton," Sarles noted.

The routine

For Sarles and Decker, a 7:30 game starts hours earlier in Colonial Club. There they apply the orange and black war paint and position their whigs. But they do not drink alcohol. "It's a sober exercise," Decker said.

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Showing up at Jadwin at least 30 minutes before a game – and more than two hours before the Penn game – the pair often find they can best startle teams during warm-ups.

"There's not a lot of fans there, the band's not playing, there's no music on, so they can hear everything you're saying," Decker said. "So you get it in their heads right there."

Sarles, a history major from Wellesley, Mass., said he can trace his heckling roots to his father, who used to abuse referees at Big East games in Providence and get "passionate" about college basketball.

Decker, a politics major from Buffalo, N.Y., honed his cheering skills as a public-address announcer at his high school's basketball games.

This experience comes into play when the pair pause from their diatribes to spark pro-Tiger cheers in the student section and embolden fans around them to join in.

"It fires up the rest of the people, and they're laughing, having a good time," Decker noted. "And then they're more willing to cheer and become more vocal."

The duo said they are encouraged when members of Princeton's squad tell them how effective the cheers are. But the most satisfaction comes when, in an instant, an opposing player takes his eyes off the game, glancing at Decker and Sarles.

"If you can get face recognition and have someone turn or look at you and acknowledge that they heard you," Sarles said, "then that just fires us up all the more because we know they can hear us."