The Turgeonites are a group of students who dress up in suits and ties to support men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon and his staff.
There are suits for scuba diving, suits for swimming and suits for going to the moon. There are lawsuits, jumpsuits and cat suits.
There are many different kinds of suits, but the story of the Turgeonites starts with a simple business suit.
Last winter, juniors Cory Frontin and Jamie Morris were watching the men’s basketball team play in Comcast Center, surrounded by empty seats.
“I found out that I was going to get a new suit for Christmas for job interviews and stuff, and I was saying, ‘Man, I wish I could wear it more,’” Frontin, an aerospace engineering major, said.
At the same time, Morris was commenting on the lack of support students seemed to have for new coach Mark Turgeon, who took the position after beloved coach Gary Williams retired.
“No one was really paying attention to the fact that coach Turgeon was doing a really good job,” said Morris, an elementary education major.
“Somewhere in the course of the game, we put the two ideas together,” added Frontin. “We said, ‘You know who wears suits? The coaching staff.’”
Following the game, Morris and Frontin sent their friends a mass email, asking them to participate in what they called a crazy experiment.
“Most of them were down for it — we only got rejected by like two people,” Morris said.
Junior Steve Ernst said that he liked suits and he liked basketball, so he decided to suit up with his friends.
“I really liked Coach’s style,” the fire protection engineering major said. “He seems like a really cool, down-to-earth guy, and it was just a fun idea. I’d gone to games in the past, but this was just another reason to go.”
“I thought it was a fun opportunity to go and yell once a week,” added junior music major Logan Seith.
They started out innocently enough, unaware that in a few short months their image would be gracing TVs across the country, and their actions would become the subject of sports talk show banter. Their name, the Turgeonites, originated during an ESPN broadcast, when sportscaster and university alumnus Len Elmore noticed them sitting behind the Terps’ bench and coined the term.
“We don’t take ourselves seriously enough to give ourselves a name,” Morris said. “We see ourselves as a group of guys who go out and support the team.”
A couple of guys, a couple of suits, a couple of games; that was supposed to be it. They were going to make their statement, draw attention to the team and then retire.
“We didn’t think it was going to be this big thing. We thought it would be fun, that we would show our appreciation for the coach and the team, and then we’d stop,” Morris said. “But when we first suggested that we were going to stop doing it, people freaked out.”
So an hour or so before game time, either Frontin or Ernst arrives at Comcast to reserve the best seats — just behind the Terps’ bench — for the rest of the group.
When the other five or six Turgeonites trickle in and the game begins, they cheer and clap, mimicking the respectful mannerisms of their favorite team member, Turgeon.
“We have a philosophy. We try to be sportsmanlike, like when they shake the papers and say they suck, we clap because that’s what coach Turgeon does,” Morris said. “We try to be respectful of our opponents, as respectful as possible.”
The group’s renown is baffling, some Turgeonites said. The whole point was to bring attention to Turgeon, they said.
“We try to deflect attention away from us,” Morris said. “We’re in the backdrop.”
Being a Turgeonite is like living a double life. Inside Comcast, they’re almost celebrities.
People, including Turgeon’s wife, ask for pictures. They often get compliments on their look, and once, they said, a woman told them they were “brilliant.”
The athletic department even included them in a sportsmanship video and set up a photo for the group with Turgeon himself.
“The day after they took the photo and posted it on Facebook, it got like 2,500 likes, and so everything on Facebook that day was just raining us,” Frontin said.
But when the game is over and they hang their suits back up in their closets, the Turgeonites try to return to being just regular students. Sometimes, they said, that can be hard.
“It’s weird, I feel like another kid at the games and then I go home and on Facebook, there’s all these posts about the Turgeonites,” Ernst said.
And though getting recognized by complete strangers is rare, Morris said, there was the time someone recognized Ernst as “one of those Turgeon guys” at a parade.
The effect of the Turgeonites is vastly different from the original plan the group worried wouldn’t work out.
“Our main concern was, would people even know what we were doing? Would they think we were just those kids who came from class or work?” Morris said.
The key to the look, Frontin and Morris decided, was Turgeon’s signature gray spot. The first time, they used white chalk taken from a classroom to color the front of their hair, which didn’t show up as well as the baby powder they now use.
They’ve also taken up copying the dance team’s dance moves, after Frontin and Ernst said they noticed a lull in the crowd during a timeout.
The fans loved it, giving the group a round of applause. The reaction from sportscasters, however, has been mixed, Morris said.
“One TV announcer said that Paula Abdul needed to teach us some dance moves,” Morris said. “We’ve seen videos on TV and stuff, and it looks pretty bad.”
At times, The Turgeonites said they grow tired of the attention — the constant Facebook posts, texts and the cameras. But Turgeon, the man they had hoped to impress the most, knows their intentions are pure.
“They seem to be a great group of young men that represent our University and basketball program in a first class manner,” Turgeon wrote in an email. “I just wish they didn’t put so much grey in their hair — it makes me feel old.”
It’s a unique idea, said sophomore journalism major Melissa Katz.
“You have the people who dress up in those body morph suits and those people who paint their faces, but they’re different and it shows Maryland pride at the same time,” she said. “I think they’re the coolest things ever.”
While the Turgeonites seem to have made a name for themselves, Frontin said he’s just happy people are paying more attention to the games again.
“Our aim is to bring attention and excitement to the team, and we’ve done that,” Frontin said. “And as long as we continue to do that by dressing up, we’ll do that.”
