Courtesy photo Reed Niebauer served as both Herky the Hawk’s handler and dressed as Herky on the field or court.

Cambria County residents kept a close eye on the University of Iowa over the past half decade watching Central Cambria graduate Max Murin reach All-American status twice as a Hawkeye wrestler.

But unbeknownst to most of them, another county native was in an even more prominent position and visible at nearly every big Iowa sports event.

Reed Niebauer, a Penn Cambria graduate and son of wrestling and track and field coach Todd Niebauer, will be graduating from Iowa in May and recently revealed a secret he’s been keeping for nearly two and a half years – he’s been masquerading as Herky the Hawk, Iowa’s mascot, at wrestling matches, football games and the women’s basketball team’s Final Four run.

“He literally was the most famous dude on campus that no one knew about,” Murin said.

Niebauer was one of a three-to-six-man rotation portraying Herky over the past three years and got the chance to play the character in different ways depending on what scenario he was working.

“Herky is very well recognized in the community,” Niebauer said. “We toe the line between being a tough, fierce mascot and one that can have fun and make kids smile. It’s fun playing both sides of that.”

How it started

Niebauer played soccer, wrestled and ran cross country and track at Penn Cambria and envisioned part of his college life on the

soccer field.

But COVID-19 changed those plans.

“I spent all of high school thinking I was going to play soccer in college,” Niebauer said. “But with how the pandemic really impacted everything my last two years, it ended up being better for me to focus on the aspects outside of athletics.”

Seemingly moving away from athletics, Niebauer agreed to take a trip to Iowa at the urging of his mother, Tonya, who had graduated from the school.

Because of her, Reed had always been a fan of Iowa, and after his visit, he fell in love with the city and campus and decided to enroll and pursue a double major in film and communications.

It wasn’t long after he arrived on campus that he noticed an advertisement regarding Herky the Hawk.

“My freshman year, I saw advertisements for the tryouts,” Niebauer said. “I was interested. I have always sort of found mascots really interesting. I remember in high school seeing people be our panther at Penn Cambria. It always sort of intrigued me. Of course, it was high school, and the people didn’t take it too seriously. I was always like – I would have so much fun doing that compared to these people, because they made it look like a job. But I was sure there were probably people who were mascots in high school that would be better in the tryout and that it wasn’t really worth my time.”

According to his father, Reed’s interest in mascots went back to his childhood.

“When he was a kid, he was fascinated with the Disney characters when we went to Disney,” Todd Niebauer said. “He always loved them.”

A year passed, and Reed decided when he saw the advertisement again he was going to give it a shot.

“My sophomore year, I saw the same ad,” Reed said. “I don’t really know what changed, but I didn’t have anything to do that Saturday. I thought it was going to be really embarrassing, so I didn’t tell anybody, and it was – but I did well at it – and I guess the rest is history.”

Reed landed the position, and the scholarship that comes with it, and made a phone call to his father.

“I had no clue,” Todd Niebauer said. “He called me on a three-way call with my wife when I was at my big wrestling tournament at Mount Aloysius and his exact words were ‘tell Mike Murin his son is not the only one on an athletic scholarship at the University of Iowa,’ and I didn’t know what he meant. He didn’t tell me until he got it. I didn’t have a clue that he even tried out. He just surprised us. It was really cool.”

Becoming Herky

Reed began portraying Herky the Hawk in January of 2023, and apparently it’s true that you have to walk the walk before you can talk the talk.

“The first and maybe most important thing is that you have to learn how to do the walk,” Reed said. “Every mascot walks a little different. It sounds stupid to describe, but if he were to walk like a normal person, he’d look kind of pathetic. So, Herky always walks like he’s going someplace.”

During the tryout, Reed was tested to see how he would react on the spot in public.

“We do a lot of improv situations,” Reed said. “We do something called the prop game where you take a random item like a water bottle and try to imagine all the different things you can pretend that water bottle is – like a cell phone, stick of deodorant, things like that.”

Like Penn State’s Nittany Lion, Herky is involved in several activities at Iowa that became part of Reed’s life.

“We do a big entrance every football game,” Reed said. “Herky rides out on the back of a gator out onto the center of the field, and we plant the Tigerhawk flag at the center. That’s probably our most well-known tradition.”

Niebauer also made appearances as Herky at both men’s and women’s basketball games.

“We practice runouts,” Reed said. “They announce ‘Herky is in the house,’ and then you run out to the center of the court and hype the crowd up for a good 30 seconds. It makes you focus on crowd interaction and show a lot of spirit and really be over the top with all of your emotions.”

Caitlin Clark fever

Those basketball games, especially the women’s ones, suddenly became the most sought after ticket in the country during Niebauer’s time at Iowa due to the emergence of Caitlin Clark.

“Her first year or two, they were still dealing with COVID-19 restrictions,” Reed said. “My freshman year was when word locally started to spread about her. My sophomore year is when it really started to blow up, and then my junior year was her final year. It was crazy to see that go from something local and seemingly common here to her becoming the most talented women’s basketball player of all time.”

But to earn the right to be at Clark’s games, Reed had to put in a lot of hours and work at less glamorous events.

“We tally how many hours people have put in toward smaller events like birthday parties, office parties, charity events, 5Ks, admission stuff for the college,” Reed said. “From there, we let the people with the most hours select the big things like which away football game they are going to go to, what basketball tournament they are going to go to – stuff like that.”

At many schools across the country, a football bowl game might be the most desirable event, but for the stretch Reed played Herky, nothing was bigger than Iowa women’s basketball.

“It was just crazy,” Reed said. “We’d have to get to the arena a few hours before the game started, and you wouldn’t get home for a few hours after because traffic was so crazy. Women’s tickets outsold our men’s like crazy. Every other school would ask us how we handled women’s basketball being such a crazy atmosphere.”

Clark led Iowa to the women’s championship game – and Reed was there to cheer her on.

“Luckily, I got to travel to the Final Four with them her final year,” Reed said. “I got to sit courtside at the championship game. I was 10 feet away from (Philadelphia Eagles quarterback) Jalen Hurts, so that was pretty cool.”

Keeping it secret

Beyond keeping it quiet that he was even trying out for the role of Herky the Hawk, Niebauer had to protect Herky’s identity once he became the mascot.

“It’s really important that you keep the secret, because that’s how you keep the character alive,” Reed said. “If everybody knows the person under the suit, no one is going to look at Herky and see him as Herky. They are going to see their friend. To everybody else, I have been the photographer for the spirit squad, which kind of made me feel like Spider-Man. My line was always that I wasn’t Herky, I was just the guy that takes Herky’s pictures.”

He might not have been able to brag to his friends about his adventures, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t enjoy them.

“The secret aspect of it is really fun,” Reed said. “The only people who knew were my roommates, because they would see me hauling these giant bags in and out of the apartment, but I kept it a secret from all of my friends. Now they are finding out, and that’s been fun. During graduation, I’ll actually wear the shoes that we wear (as Herky), so everyone there will know.”

Back home, Reed’s father had much less success keeping the secret.

“I can’t say I didn’t (tell people),” Todd Niebauer said. “I was pretty vocal about it locally. We kept it a secret when we went to Iowa. We’d be sitting in the stands and trying to keep our mouths shut, which was probably the hardest thing. Around here, I was a very braggadocious parent. I knew it wouldn’t get him in trouble around here.”

Todd reached out to his Iowa connections to share the news.

“A buddy of mine, Bill Damiano from Glendale is a huge Iowa fan,” Todd said. “I had to tell him. He’s the old wrestling coach from Glendale and is a good buddy of mine. I’m a deep-rooted Penn State guy, but there are a lot of local people – Mike Murin (Max’s father) was so proud and told a lot of people – he’s obviously a big Iowa fan because of Max. It’s been neat. A lot of people in my close circle were really happy, and they’d text me asking if it was Reed on TV when Iowa sports were on.”

As for his explanations on his extended absences, Reed had an excuse to stretch the truth.

“It’s been fun to live a double life,” Reed said. “You get to lie without feeling bad about it.”

Supporting a friend

Another of the perks for Reed was being able to serve as Herky at many of Murin’s matches.

“His parents and my parents are actually pretty close friends,” Reed said. “It was fun to think that he got to where he was through being one of the best wrestlers to come out of our area, which takes some crazy training. I ended up being an athlete at the same school through the most absurd means, but it was so fun. Our families got dinner before some games and got together after some.”

Of course, that led to Murin learning Reed’s secret.

“I have known the Niebauer family forever through wrestling,” Murin said. “His dad is the head coach at Penn Cambria, and my dad and his dad actually work together at the airport. Our families got pretty close, so I have known forever that he was the mascot. I was probably the only one on campus spreading the rumor that I knew who Herky was. It was fun.

“He was at a lot of my matches. I would always see Herky running around during my matches when I was wrestling. He had front-row seats for most of my career, so it was pretty cool having two people from the same area across the country together.”

The Cambria County presence at Iowa will continue next year when Bishop McCort wrestler Bo Bassett joins the Hawkeyes.

“It’s even bigger with him, myself and Bo Bassett now,” Murin said. “We’re trying to keep that Cambria County-to-Iowa pipeline strong. There are little pockets back home where people really like Iowa because of us.”

Special moments

In addition to moments that made the national news, Niebauer got to experience things that meant a lot to him personally – even if he did them under the mask of a hawk.

“Last January, I got to fly out to Los Angeles to shoot a Nissan commercial,” Reed said. “That was really awesome, because my major is film, and I have always wanted to be on a big Hollywood set.”

A couple years ago, he also got a “home” game with Iowa’s football program.

“Something that was really meaningful to me was getting to travel back home for the Penn State-Iowa game two seasons ago,” Reed said. “It was their White Out game, and I got to be down on the field for that and be in front of my hometown crowd.”

That doesn’t mean he got the typical reaction of a hometown hero during his return.

“I grew up around there, but they don’t know that. When they see you are rooting for the other side, Penn State fans can be really aggressive,” Reed said. “But, Herky always has fun. So, it never impacts me. I just let it roll off my back, and I can laugh at them quietly from behind the mask. The whole experience has been really special and something I’ll always treasure.”