Trey Quinn crowd surfing after beating Ole Miss (used with permission). Photo by:Crystal LoGiudice, Marx: Quinn Went Crowd Surfing. And It Was Terrific Published: October 30, 2014, 12:24 PM (CT) by Jeffrey Marx Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Marx is writing a book – “Walking with Tigers” – about LSU sports. You can follow him on Twitter: @LSUTigersBook LSU freshman Trey Quinn had a vision last week in the days leading up to the big game against Ole Miss. He even talked about it in the football team’s weight room – telling teammates and coaches what he saw coming. The vision included victory for the Tigers. It included countless fans storming the field in frenzied celebration. But it did not include crowd surfing – and certainly not any by him. “It kind of all happened in a blur,” Quinn says. “It all happened so fast.” To reset the scene: This was Saturday night in Tiger Stadium. No. 24 LSU had just defeated No. 3 Ole Miss in a 10-7 thriller. And the place was going wild. With LSU fans storming the field for the first time in more than a decade, purple-and-gold pandemonium filled the floor of Death Valley and transformed it into a wild sea of celebration. Of course, a wild sea is always best for surfing. “I was just walking around in a circle looking for people I knew, friends from home,” says Quinn, home being Lake Charles, Louisiana. “And then I hear people from behind me. ‘Pick him up. Pick him up.’ In like a second or two, everybody started lifting me up.” These were all people he’d never seen before: random strangers. Yet they might as well have been family: Tiger fans. “They just lifted me up on their shoulders, and then lifted me up a little higher,” Quinn says. “By that time, everybody started passing me around. I never had it happen to me before. You always see it, but, like, at concerts and stuff.” Quinn already knew about big moments. At Barbe High School, he became the national all-time career leader in receiving yards (6,566) and set a state record for total receptions (357). But the stage was so much larger now. He was only 18 years old, a starting wide receiver in six of his first nine games as a freshman, a guy who just made two big catches for 42 yards against Ole Miss – and now he was crowd surfing while ecstatic fans chanted his name. What was he thinking? “I didn’t know what to think … didn’t know what to do,” Quinn says. “I had no thoughts at the time. I was just kind of enjoying the moment.” Quinn’s parents, Dave and Angie, were walking down the steps of the 100-level section in which they’d been seated when they first noticed that an LSU player was surfing. Then Dave Quinn – a medical physicist at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital – realized what number the player was wearing: “The closer I got, I said, wait a minute, that’s number 8. That’s Trey.” Quinn had one immediate thought as he watched his son being passed around in the air: “I was shocked. He’s the type that doesn’t really draw attention to himself. He’s really an introvert.” Dave quickly concluded that Trey could not have been the one to initiate the surfing – that the fans must have started it – and he would later learn that he was right. Dave says he also learned something about LSU students: “They’re smart! They did not try to pick up La’el Collins or Vadal Alexander” – each a 300-plus-pound offensive lineman – “or any of the other big guys. They went for Trey.” Trey is listed at 6-foot, 194 pounds. Quinn is not sure how long he stayed in the air. He estimates that he surfed for 25 or 30 yards. But thanks to the power of digital photography – combined with the boundless reach of social media – it is a scene that quickly went viral and will never really go away. Numerous fans took photos and videos of Quinn surfing. But one photo in particular – captured by a freelancer on assignment for USA Today Sports Images – has been primarily responsible for all the attention Quinn has gotten. The photographer, Crystal LoGiudice of Mandeville, Louisiana, was initially on the field right after the game ended. She scrambled for a few quick photos of LSU coach Les Miles and Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze shaking hands. She then tried to move toward the area in front of the LSU student section where the Tigers usually gather after victory to sing the alma mater. LoGiudice hoped to get some good photos of the players celebrating there. “But I got slammed,” she says. “I quickly realized I was making a mistake.” LoGiudice, 28 years old and only 5-foot-1, told herself: “I’ve got to get out of this mosh pit of students.” She retreated to the north endzone stands and found a safe perch above the tunnel through which the LSU team enters and exits the field. LoGiudice set up with a wide-angle lens on her camera because she wanted to capture broad shots of the entire scene unfolding before her. But then a nearby fan pointed out that an LSU player had been lifted by the crowd. Quinn had just begun his elevated journey. LoGiudice was “very pleasantly surprised” to see that and to know that she was perfectly positioned to capture a great photo. She quickly switched to a 400 mm telephoto lens and took “at least 15 or 20 frames” before she was satisfied with what she had. As far as game action went, photos of LSU tight end Logan Stokes hauling in the winning touchdown pass and LSU running back Leonard Fournette having his facemask ripped away from his helmet would long be remembered. But LoGiudice had the iconic photo that would forever represent the splendor of the night: a solo surfer riding a sea of celebratory joy. By the time Quinn exited the stadium to meet up with family and friends, the photo was bouncing all over social media. The younger brother of LSU long snapper Reid Ferguson was the first to show it to Quinn. “I was like, ‘Send that to me,’ because I didn’t know it was on Twitter,” Quinn says. Once he looked at his phone, Quinn realized that the photo was all over the place. His phone was blowing up with voicemails, text messages, and Twitter notifications. He’s still hearing about it everywhere he goes. On campus, fellow students call out to him: “Hey, Trey Quinn, surfing in the crowd, man.” In one of his girlfriend’s classes, the students and professor had a whole conversation about it – without ever knowing that she was dating him. Quinn’s hometown of Lake Charles has not stopped buzzing about him. By Monday morning, Keith Leger, assistant principal at S.J. Welsh Middle School, where Quinn went, already had the surfing photo framed and mounted on a wall in his office. Of course – college kids being college kids – Quinn’s teammates have been relentless in their good-natured ribbing about all the attention he’s been getting. “He’s famous!” they say. They call him “The Crowd Surfer” and “The Surfer Boy.” Tight end DeSean Smith – who also played with Quinn in high school – walks by while his buddy is being interviewed and playfully declares this: “I love you, Trey Quinn!” Jokes aside, his teammates are thrilled for him, as he’s generally considered one of the hardest-working, most low-key guys on the team. “Everyone’s giving him a hard time about all the attention,” punter Jamie Keehn says. “But I think everyone loves it deep down. It was a great picture, something that we won’t forget for a long time.” Sophomore cornerback and punt returner Tre’Davious White simply calls it “the best picture I’ve ever seen … perfect” because it was captured at just the right moment. Defensive back Jalen Collins recalls seeing the photo the morning after the game and thinking: “Wow, I wish I was crowd surfing. I wish I had that idea. It looked fun.” Quinn concedes that, yes, perhaps he will someday want to pass around the photo when he has children and grandchildren. For now, though, he prefers to think of it not as an image of one man in a moment, but as a symbol of all that is good about his teammates and about the whole of the LSU football program. “I’ve never seen so many people happy for an LSU win,” he says. “I never knew so many people appreciated what football does for the community. “I mean, I’m a freshman. That’s the first time I really saw that – how much all those people love LSU.”
Gives you goosebumps to see that. I love the fact that TS went crazy after that game. We need to be joyous of big wins.
