8 OCTOBER 10-16, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | that,” he says. Kenn also competed on his high school’s ballroom dance team, specializing in Vien- nese waltz contests. His skill earned him a ballroom dancing scholarship at Ricks College, now known as Brigham Young University-Idaho. He got a gig as the school’s mascot, Thor. But while Kenn thrived as a Viking, he wasn’t keeping up his grades. He left school to go on a two-year Mormon Church mission on the east coast of Canada. When he returned to Ricks, he landed a scholarship to continue portraying the mascot. But he had his eyes on bigger things. Kenn auditioned to become the mascot at Brigham Young University, University of Nevada-Las Vegas and others; most low- balled him with scholarship offers. When Utah State University offered him a full ride, he gladly accepted and became the school’s mascot, Big Blue, performing in front of thousands of fans. At USU, Kenn studied communications and journalism. That’s how he landed in the distribution department of the Rocky Mountain News for a summer internship, overseeing paper delivery boys and girls. Kenn hated sitting at a desk, though. So he called up the Denver Nuggets, which didn’t have a mascot. “He was like, ‘I want to be your mascot,’” recalls Lisa Whittaker, the director of game operations for the Nuggets at the time. “It was right when we were developing the mascot.” The two stayed in touch and, in 1990, when the Nuggets were ready to move for- ward with tryouts for this new mascot, Whit- taker called Kenn. Although many people submitted applica- tions, only fi ve or so landed in-person audi- tions. Wearing a gorilla costume, they each had six minutes to wow a panel of judges that the Nuggets had put together. The man who played the Atlanta Hawks mascot oversaw the tryouts. “I dunked, I danced, and I brought every prop that you could ever imagine a mascot using. I did everything,” Kenn remembers. “I almost threw up.” The routine was a hit. “He dominated,” Whittaker says. “He was by far the best.” Soon, the Nuggets called Kenn to offer him the role. He managed to negotiate a starting salary of $26,500 and dropped out of USU. All that he needed now was to learn what character he’d be portraying. “‘It’s going to be a mountain lion called Rocky,” Nuggets managers told him. The Rocky character was the creation of Tom Sapp, who ran Real Characters, a mascot design agency in Atlanta. A former advertising creative director and illustrator, Sapp had come up with the fi rst costume for the University of Georgia Bulldogs mascot in his basement. He’d formed Real Characters in 1989, just a year before the Nuggets decided to add a mascot. “One of our very fi rst clients was Denver,” Sapp recalls. “We didn’t want a big blob, we knew that,” Whittaker says. “We wanted somebody that could really be in the crowd.” To prepare for a meeting with Nuggets leadership, Sapp researched the Rocky Moun- tain region. “It was obvious that the name was going to be ‘Rocky,’” Sapp says. He identifi ed a mountain lion as an ideal fi t for the character, then created a story for the mascot, which involved a cat named Rocky, a lightning bolt that got separated from its family during a powerful storm, and a merging of the two. That’s how Rocky got his distinctive lightning-bolt tail. The character had the “speed” and “energy” of a lightning bolt with the cleverness and strength of a mountain lion, Sapp notes. The Nuggets sent Kenn to meet with Sapp in Georgia. Sapp placed him in the original version of the Rocky costume and took him to the Piedmont Park Arts Festival. He wanted to see how he would perform. “Kenn did great, and people loved the character. I knew we had a fearless per- former,” says Sapp, who now has built close to 400 characters around the U.S. Kenn made his debut as Rocky, a 5’10”, 154-pound mountain lion with a three-foot- long lightning-bolt tail, on December 15, 1990, in a game against the Phoenix Suns. Given his string of successes playing differ- ent mascots, he was confi dent. But in his fi rst few games, he struggled. “Some of the skits I did in college that were just slam dunks totally bombed. Bombed. Crickets,” Kenn recalls. After a series of skits went sour, Carl Scheer, then a high-ranking executive with the Nuggets, called Kenn into his offi ce. “He looks at me and he goes, ‘Kenn, this is not college. This is the NBA. Now step it up,’” he remembers. Kenn was shaken, and decided he needed help. He called the Atlanta Hawks mascot who had overseen the Rocky auditions and asked for some mentorship. Through that, he realized he needed to simplify his approach to Rocky and focus more on moving with purpose and telling a story. Slowly and steadily, he gained the swag- ger and confi dence that are so characteristic of Rocky today. “Right away, he was maybe one of the most athletic people I had ever seen,” says Paul Andrews, who was in charge of the music during games when Kenn started. “He could do anything in that suit. What he was doing inside that suit, most people couldn’t do outside that suit.” In the years that followed, Rocky’s popu- larity grew. Kenn entertained kids with his antics and adults with his edginess and wit. He mastered trampoline dunks, rappelled down into the arena, and performed skits that delighted the crowds fi rst in McNichols Arena and later the Pepsi Center, which became Ball Arena. “He’s the full package. There’s not a lot of people that have athleticism, comedy, improv and clever skit writing,” says Scott Hesington, a close friend and business part- ner of Kenn’s who portrayed Stuff the Magic Dragon for the Orlando Magic and Hooper for the Detroit Pistons. “He really has a good hold of all those things, which has made him really marketable in that community.” Ryan Hess, a current Nuggets season- ticket holder, remembers seeing Rocky in the early ’90s. “He was always engaging. There could be timeouts going on, and you’re curi- ous what Rocky is doing to instigate,” Hess says. “The thing that I liked about Rocky is he could be unpredictable and would get into it with other fans.” But Rocky — Kenn — most famously got into it with opposing players. When Charles Barkley, the legendary NBA player and current basketball com- mentator, played for the Phoenix Suns, he started a decades-long feud with Rocky. In 1993, the forward punched the mascot square in the face. “I didn’t know at fi rst if he was playing or not, because he really punched me hard. Bloodied my lip, loosened my tooth. Bloody nose. When I found out he was playing, that’s when I turned it up,” says Kenn. Another time, Barkley punched Rocky as he was walking on stilts, causing him to fall. In 1994, Rocky used a baby bottle to mock Dennis Rodman — then a fearsome rebounder for the San Antonio Spurs — as a crybaby. Rodman took the bottle from Rocky and pretended to suck on it, earning laughs and applause from the audience. “He’s got a snarkiness to him, which is just fantastic,” says Darren McKee, a longtime Denver sports talk-radio personality who works for Altitude Sports Radio. “Rocky is one of the few mascots you’d like to go have a beer with after the game. He’s that kind of mascot.” Andrews, who’s now the CEO of the National Western Stock Show, recounts a time when Disney on Ice was performing at the arena. The ice-show staff wanted to do a promo featuring Rocky and a stuffed Mickey Mouse; the plan called for Rocky to walk onto center court and wait for an an- nouncer to read an advertisement. Instead, Kenn sat the stuffed Mickey Mouse at center court, ran back to the base- line, and settled down into a three-point stance like he was about to rush a quarterback. He then sprinted, dove and tackled Mickey Mouse, which exploded “into a thousand pieces,” Andrews recalls. “The Disney people in the crowd are furious. The crowd just went nuts. They thought it was one of the funniest things that they had ever seen.” Kenn became known for his daredevil tricks. He attempted Hear Him Roar continued from page 7 continued on page 10 Drake Solomon (left), Kenn Solomon and Cade Solomon are keeping their eye on the ball. EVAN SEMÓN
