Travis Fetchko didn’t grow up hearing stories about Herschel Walker. As a kid, he never heard Larry Munson call a Georgia game on the radio. Vince Dooley’s name didn’t really mean all that much to Fetchko. Ultimately, with his family from New Jersey, Fetchko never had any ties to Georgia or its football program.

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That is, until he arrived at Georgia as a student in the fall of 2009. From that point on, Fetchko would leave his mark on the university in a way that many would say is rather … unique.

Fetchko, along with his former hall mate, Andy Hill, founded the UGA Spike Squad, the spiked-shoulder-pad-wearing, face-and-body-painted screaming group of college students that graces the bottom of section 109 at Sanford Stadium every single fall football Saturday in Athens.

In 2009, along with other painted student groups, Fetchko and Hill lined up outside the student gate hours before it opened. During that season, they weren’t painted up, and it was during those early hours and in the season that followed that Fetchko said the not-so-in-depth-process of creating the concept of the Spike Squad was formed.

“We decided we wanted to do something a little different than everybody else,” he said casually, “so we came up with the spiked shoulder pads idea.”

They took to eBay and bought several sets of football pads. Fetchko said they really just threw things together with the look being likened to that of costumed Oakland Raiders fans and early 1990s WWE wrestlers — of whom Fetchko remembered Hill being a big fan.

While the Spike Squad has become a Georgia football icon in many ways, the tradition of a group of students wearing those beloved spiked shoulder pads didn’t start until the 2010 season — the Tennessee home game on Oct. 9, to be exact. Many forget, or simply don’t know, that the symbol of the spiked pads hasn’t even been around for a decade.

That same year, the Spike Squad made one more appearance at the Georgia Tech game — a game Fetchko remembers to be quite cold with just shoulder pads to keep the members warm.

So, for those first two years (2010 and 2011) the Spike Squad really was just a small group of friends all dressed up for games as Fetchko recalled only about four or so of them really sticking with it. If someone would have asked Fetchko back in 2010 whether the idea of the Spike Squad would have caught fire within the Bulldogs fan base, well, he was quick to answer,

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“No, not at all,” he said. “I never would have thought it would still be going today.”

But things started to change for the students in 2012, when a certain LSU game caught the attention of much of the college football world.

Katelyn Caudill never understood why her friends never stayed for an entire football game.

Throughout her first two football seasons at Georgia, Caudill usually found herself standing alone in the student section by the beginning of the fourth quarter, looking down on a group of rowdy, painted-up college students who refused to leave the stadium until after the last second ticked off the game clock.

“I always thought that I wanted to be doing something like that,” she said.

During the summer of 2013, she got her chance to be a part of the group when she saw a post on Facebook about the Spike Squad holding an interest meeting for anyone who wanted to join the group.

Caudill attended the meeting, then went through the interview process that had then been set in place for new Spike Squad members and by the start of the 2013 season against South Carolina, was was decked out in her very own set of spiked shoulder pads.

“I felt like I was a little lost on a big campus like Georgia for the first two years I was there, and I know that happens to everybody, but then I got to junior year, and I was in Spike Squad,” Caudill said. “It was like I finally found where I was meant to be.”

While the Spike Squad already meant a lot to those involved, the world of college football had yet to really see all that the Spike Squad was, but that changed when the morning of the LSU game came around that fall. In the months that followed that day, Caudill saw with her own eyes the transformation of the Spike Squad from a mere student group to a national sporting icon.

College GameDay was coming to Athens when the Bulldogs took on the Tigers at home in 2013 — the two teams will face off for the first time since Saturday in Baton Rouge.

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“We had a big group that woke up at 2 in the morning for the start of College GameDay,” Caudill said. “We waited in the Myers Quad parking lot, South Deck, because they wouldn’t let anybody come in. It was cold as heck, and we were out there freezing our butts off. Then, I think around 4 o’clock in the morning we got painted up, and we were able to run in. We got a little spot on the front row with the paint line.”

That weekend, Caudill remembers always feeling the presence of a camera around the group. The notoriety of the Spike Squad rose immensely after that day when Georgia defeated LSU 44-41.

“With the game, our day was about 18 hours long until we got home,” Fetchko said. “That whole day, that game was probably the top game I have ever seen in person.”

But that game did more than leave a lasting mark for the Georgia fans who saw it. It left a lasting mark on the Spike Squad, as well, as more and more people began recognizing (and loving) the spiked-padded student group.

By the beginning of November, students (and others) were approaching the Spike Squad with their very own set of spiked pads.

“It was always when that first game in November was,” Fetchko said. “People would always bring their kids in, and that was their Halloween costume. That was really the moment that did it for me. They could have been Batman or something, but they were dressing up as us. That was always the most rewarding moment.”

By the end of the school year, the Georgia Joker (aka Pierce Wallace with Joker-like face paint and a lime green wig) was inducted into ESPN’s Fan Hall of Fame after he received more than 85,000 votes in a 10-day span.

“I think all of that recognition, it just spiraled at that point,” Caudill said. “I don’t know how it happened, but it’s almost like it just fueled itself.”

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By the start of the 2014 season, the Spike Squad was well established in Georgia football lore, but it took one more step to become truly preserved as a Georgia sports icon.

In the early months of the 2017 fall semester, Langston Leake was worried.

As the new president of the Spike Squad, Leake felt a lot of pressure for his group to continue to live up to the Spike Squad legend. But when the 2017 interest meeting rolled around, his anxieties increased when he said a total of 15 people came out for interviews.

“That was my year as president, and I was so worried because we had so many people graduate, and the squad was so much smaller that year than it had been through previous years,” Leake said. “I was even wondering how we had only been a club for five or six years and how we were going to make it. What’s going to happen after I’m gone?”

Then, a pair of golden spiked shoulder pads changed everything for the Spike Squad.

The “Savage Pads” (as they have been dubbed by fans and players alike) are golden-spiked shoulder pads that are placed atop a Georgia player’s own pads in the wake of a Georgia-caused turnover. The golden spikes have graced the shoulders of players like Lorenzo Carter, Davin Bellamy, J.R. Reed and Deandre Baker.

For those that earn the right to wear the pads, there is a certain honor and swagger that comes along with golden spikes. When the Spike Squad members see the Savage Pads, it means a little more. After all, they were the ones who donated the Savage Pads to the football team.

When representatives from the team reached out to the Spike Squad to see about the possibility of donating a pair of pads, there was no way they were going to say no. In all, the Spike Squad donated three sets of pads: a red pair of practice pads for the offense, a black set for the defense and then the now-famous golden Savage Pads.

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And when asked former and current Spike Squad members can recall the moment that the golden spikes changed everything, it’s Bellamy’s strip-sack against Notre Dame in 2017.

After Bellamy ran to the excited Georgia sideline in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus in South Bend, Indiana, the golden spikes were placed on his shoulders. And even as the game came its end, with a Georgia win, he didn’t take them off.

“When I say that was one of the defining moments of my college career watching the Notre Dame game and realizing that we were a lot better than I thought we were, then that crazy strip-sack at the very end of the game and then on top of every thing else, seeing Davin Bellamy wearing the Savage Pads on national TV after we clinched that game?” Leake said breathlessly. “That was one of the best moments of my life. I am getting chills just talking about it.”

Throughout the remainder of the 2017 season, fans continued to find ways to incorporate the Savage Pads into their game day routines. Costumes were made. Shirts were sold. And every time, members of the Spike Squad smiled.

“There are at least 20 to 30 people that I see every single game with the Savage Pads T-shirts on,” current Spike Squad member Zach Miles said. “We definitely appreciate the football team accepting us and allowing us to be that link between the team, the fan base and the student section. It’s kind of intertwined all three groups.”

And in doing so, that has solidified the Spike Squad’s place in Georgia lore.

“It legitimized us more than anything else that they could have done,” Leake said. “Every time I see the Savage Pads, even just on the T-shirts, I just smile because I know we have come so far just as a grassroots student movement.”

According to current co-president Kelby Canada, after the 2017 season and the use of the Savage Pads, interest skyrocketed, with the group having to move the location of its interest meeting because of the number of people wanting to join.

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“We used to have our interest meeting in the lobby of Rutherford Hall but, this year we had to move to a big classroom at the Miller Learning Center because we could not fit the amount of people we were getting emails from and people asking when we were going to have the meeting,” Canada said.

With around 50 people in attendance at the interest meeting, Canada said the increased interest didn’t have much to do with the Spike Squad itself but everything to do with Georgia football.

“I can’t attribute it to much more than the football team,” Canada said. “The better they are doing, the more we are on the big stages, and the more we are getting recognized. We owe a lot to them.”

While the Spike Squad has yet to even turn 10 years old, the impact of this small student group continues to push deeper into the bedrock of Georgia sports, not just football.

For years, the Spike Squad has had a prominent place at many major sporting events at Georgia, simply because the students want to be there.

“We went to women’s basketball games, men’s basketball, too, volleyball, equestrian — we were like, ‘How do you cheer for equestrian?’ Well, we figured it out,” Caudill said with a laugh.

The Spike Squad does more in the community, too; the members attend business openings and community-wide events. They work with kids with special needs to include them in the Spike Squad experience, too.

“It’s just the fact that people know that we are doing this stuff for the right reasons and not just getting all the attention,” Canada said. “We love getting to take the pictures with the kids and hear people say that they had been waiting all year to come to a football game just to get a picture with the Spike Squad — it does really mean a lot.”

But more than anything else, when the paint dries and the pads come on, the Spike Squad flips the switch in more ways than one.

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“There is something about the pads and being able to put on that alter ego,” Caudill said. “I didn’t have a name for mine — some people did – but it was just something about it. You feel like you are almost like the ambassador for the student section, and you’ve gotta represent them.”

And that feeling? For many who have experienced it, it’s hard to explain.

“It’s definitely a feeling that is very indescribable,” Miles said. “It really does send chills down your spine just knowing that they are looking at you for direction, and you are one of the reasons why Sanford Stadium is rocking every Saturday.”

Then, on days when the Spike Squad doesn’t have to wear the pads, it feels a little unnatural.

“Now, it feels weird going to a sporting event and not wearing my pads and yelling my head off,” Leake said. “It feels weird and strange, and sometimes when I am watching the games at home, like during the Rose Bowl, I had my pads on at home. I just didn’t think it felt right to not have my pads on and yelling my heart out.”

And all of this, and so much more, started on a whim — but isn’t that how everything starts? With something as small as a thought or an idea? For the Spike Squad, what started as an idea turned into an icon — all because a young man who knew very little about Georgia growing up wanted to do something different.

It was really that simple.

“It’s huge,” Fetchko said. “It means that I left some type of lasting effect. It’s really hard to describe it … not many people may know who I am or that I started it but there it is.”

And there, at the bottom of section 109 in Sanford Stadium, the Spike Squad will remain as a symbol of the passion of the Bulldog fan base.

(Top photo of Langston Leake: Spike Squad)