This is not a Connecticut “dream-come-true” story.
For Conor Geary, it’s more a dream from which he has yet to be roused.
Reveries like this start with a “yes.” Here, Geary is asked to put on a hot, sticky, ridiculous mascot suit in college and reluctantly agrees. That leads to another, even sillier one in Hartford. Then one door opens and leads to another, one gig to another. Louder and louder, deeper and deeper one gets in.
“I absolutely did not set out to do this,” Geary said. “Everything that has come over the course of the last six years from sports and arena entertainment and game-day announcing was something where each one happened fortuitously from the previous one.”
And now Geary rattles ear drums and gets adrenaline flowing nearly every day on the state’s sports calendar, booming under the name “Game Day Conor” at Yard Goats games, UConn men’s and women’s basketball, hockey and football games, NCAA events all over the country, Connecticut Sun games and anywhere else there is a crowd and a need to get the folks “loud and proud.”
“The ubiquity of being in front of so many home crowds in Connecticut is good for the fan experience,” Geary said. “It really does come from a place of humility, because I really do have a very limelight seeking, microphone-shouting, look-at-me, center-of-attention job, but I really feel like my obligation is to the fans.”
These days, the ubiquitous GDC shows up in more places than Dan Hurley, gives away more prizes than Drew Carey and he’s available for your private events; book him at GameDayConor.com if the price is right.
If he’s not the face of Connecticut sports in 2024, Conor Geary undeniably supplies its lungs.
“He is definitely a most valuable player,” Yard Goats president Tim Restall said, “in that he can impact everyone in the building. He can relate to the 5-year-old kid sitting in the stands or the CEO sitting courtside. He can connect to all the fans, get them involved and engaged. And he does it like no one else.”
Game-day hosting is a relatively new vocation, evolving over the last generation or so as sporting events developed in-game contests and promotions. It’s essential for minor league baseball, where a very young, sleepy crowd needs to be kept engaged and goofy contests are a staple.
A UConn basketball crowd needs less prodding, but somebody has to introduce “Dannnnnnn Hurrrrrrrrrr-leeeeeeee” to bring things to a crescendo, or hand out a plane ticket to the Carolinas for a made half-court shot. And who better to chase a 75-foot putt down the court at Mohegan Sun Arena to usher it through a small opening and give the winner a prize and a hug?
That would be Game Day Conor.
Geary, 36, is from Manchester and East Catholic High. At age 10, he gained the courage to perform before a crowd, ironically enough, by playing The Cowardly Lion in a production of “The Wizard of Oz” at C.A.S.T Children’s Theatre, a program he still strongly recommends.\
Older and bolder, he played The Wiz in “The Wiz” and, speaking of showman, Buffalo Bill in “Annie Get Your Gun”.
His mother, Faith, took him to Gampel Pavilion for the women’s championship celebration in 1995, his father, Denis, to meet the men’s plane after their championship in 1999. Conor lost his father, who had devoted much of his life to helping adults with disabilities, to cancer last December, but not before they got to share UConn’s 2023 championship.
“The pillar he was for so many people in the community, I owe so much of who I am to who he was,” Conor Geary said. At Siena College in upstate New York, Conor Geary earned a degree in marketing and management, with a minor in philosophy, and was a leader in the student senate. Siena had a nationally televised basketball game, and the mascot got sick.
“I got a call from the vice president of student affairs, or whatever the title was, and they insisted that they didn’t trust anybody to be the mascot on national television except for me,” Geary says, “because I had a lot to lose as the student government president.”
His answer was thanks, but no thanks. They persisted, and next thing you know, Conor Geary, senior from Manchester, was Bernie The Saint Bernard.
“And I … had … a … blast,” Geary said.
A few years later, Geary was working and living in downtown Hartford, 2 1/2 blocks from the empty lot where a new stadium was to be built for minor league team moving from New Britain. He saw on the Facebook that the Yard Goats needed a mascot and he inquired about tryouts
There had been little interest, and the team needed someone to do it at the Glastonbury Senior Center that night.
By then, he’d learned that saying “yes” opened doors and could lead him in directions he’d never dreamed of, and thus Geary became the first to ever don the Chompers suit.
When Dunkin’ Park opened, Geary and his family held a 60th birthday party for his father.
“I fell in love with the place, and I sent Tim Restall a text message saying, whenever you have a job that fits what I do for a living, let me know. I’m going to come work for you.”
In 2017, Geary became the Yard Goats director of events and services. A year later, the team needed a game-day host. Knowing that Geary had once managed the Brew HaHa comedy club at City Steam, they asked if he knew any comedians who might be interested in the job.
“I said, ‘well, most he comedians I know are busy being comedians,'” Geary said. “That sounds like something I might have fun doing.”
Geary was one of the 19 who auditioned, and the Yard Goats, reluctant to have him do both jobs, eventually gave him the shot, working with Mellany Castro, now Gov. Ned Lamont’s director of communications, and Frank Berrian. Eventually, Geary worked alone, MC-ing the coffee cup races, the dress-up-like-a-cheeseburger contest, you name it.
“Ultimately, I am a tool to execute whatever it is somebody else has decided to do,” Geary says. “I have to memorize a script, yet be ready to make stuff up.”
Then the UConn baseball team scheduled a few games at Dunkin’ Park and asked the Yard Goats if they could use some of their in-game devices. Geary said “yes” to coming in on a day off and the shakers and movers of UConn athletics got to know him, hear him and he got in deeper, started dong UConn events in 2018, Hurley’s first season.
“And so each one of the next opportunities came with some affiliation with the prior one,” Geary said.
In other words, Geary’s success has come, in more ways than one, by word of mouth. He was hired to work the NCAA lacrosse championships at Rentschler Field two years ago, and now that’s part of his event-juggling; he was in Philadelphia this weekend for another final four. He hosted the FCS football championships last year, and the NCAA men’s basketball regionals in Los Angeles this past March.
Last season, someone approached Geary at the XL Center and said he had been instructed by Jen Rizzotti, president of the CT Sun, not to leave the building without his contact information.
“I went to a UConn game and I just liked his energy,” Rizzotti said. “It was like really consistent. Most importantly, I loved the way he engaged with the fans and especially at a pro game, it’s more of an event than a basketball game. How the fans perceive the game is just as important as the outcome and I felt he could create an atmosphere that could really make it fun for our fans.”
Geary began with the Sun, working Caitlin Clark’s sold-out pro debut five days later. The Yard Goats were home the rest of the week.
Dom Amore: UConn’s Napheesa Collier on top of her game, approaching the top of the basketball world
Does he ever get tired? No need to ask. Conor and his wife, Tori, are now parents of a 16-month old daughter, Harper Rose.
“At the end of the day, I am a regular dude,” Geary said, as he looks over the script an hour before the Sun were to play Minnesota. “I had to mow the lawn last night… put the baby to bed and do the dishes. It’s a long day for me. But I’ve got to find that gear and a few minutes after I get my first hit, it’s on. It’s on. Lights are out, curtains coming up, I don’t have the luxury of being tired.”
Geary doesn’t have a pregame ritual or regular beverage, like tea with honey. It may be hot chocolate one day, hot coffee another, usually in a sweatshirt or hoodie. “Today,” he told The Courant, “I’m warming up my voice by talking to you.”
He does pace himself during a game and tries to generate vocal power from his core, the way a stage performer is trained. “Volume and intensity are two different things,” Geary said. “Sometimes I’m yelling, sometimes I’m shouting, but I try to leave that top 20 percent for the really important moments.”
When he yells “Make Some Noi-oise” at a UConn game, that’s full throttle. When he reminds UConn fans not to sit until the Huskies score – or, or, or, or,” he calls on some of his stage techniques to handle the breathing.
“On a number of occasions I’ve gotten physically dizzy from holding my breath that long,” Geary said.
If you’re one of the tens of thousands, or more, in Connecticut who know who “Game Day Conor” is, you know there is never a drop off in either energy or intensity.
He’s asked for autographs often now, and he loves letting kids try on his UConn championship ring. When an employee at a local supermarket asked for a seflie, saying “my friends will never believe you’re here,” Geary put down his can of soup and complied. He gets invited to play golf with people he’s never met.
“He represents the brand and the team he is working for like no other,” Restall says.
And Game Day Conor is now a brand in its own right, an organic phenomenon, native to Connecticut. But in the end, game-day hosting is a part-time, seasonal job and Geary makes his living year-round by doing corporate sales for the Yard Goats and stringing as many events together as he can. Many do it as a stepping stone to sportscasting, or something else, but Conor Geary, who never knew it would lead to all this the first time he said “yes,” doesn’t know where his high-octane personality and set of iron pipes will lead him next.
He has allowed himself a wistful daydream about hosting Wheel of Fortune before Ryan Seacrest was named Pat Sajak’s heir apparent, otherwise the trail of open doors is to lead where it may.
“My schtick is arena performance, it’s crowd entertainment,” Geary said. “I’m not a play-by-play person, I’m not an analyst, I’m not a talking head, I’m not a deep-dive, the morning after. I’m going to make sure the kids get the T shirts, the sponsor activations are done. Is there an overlap, something that comes from this? Maybe. But I’m not seeking it. I’m very happy with what I’m doing.”
