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It starts with a single person chanting, “GOLD!!!”

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And it ends with a thunderous “RUSH!!!”

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That ear-piercing bellow enters your ears and lands in your stomach. It grabs you by the neck and yanks your head toward its source: a packed Charlotte Convention Center full of passionate Carolina Gold Rush fans. Their screams coalesce into this single, unified chant, one that reminds opposing Major League Table Tennis (MLTT) players who they’re trespassing on whenever they enter the Gold Mine. 

When the audience releases you from its grip, you start to tilt your head away. It stops. Your eyes have just reached the heart of the Gold Mine. They fixate on the Grim Reaper in a golden mask, holding his scythe and wearing a Gold Rush jersey. And they move as he plods along the walkway between the stands and courtside seats, initiating chants that provide the crowd with enough fuel to keep the fire lit from underneath the feet of anyone who dares face the Gold Rush.

That’s the Carolina Reaper. As with most reapers, he appears whenever an opponent of the Gold Rush faces grave danger. But this reaper is not a harbinger of death. His sole desire with each appearance is to fill the Charlotte Convention Center with life.

“I just want to show teams that there’s this enthusiasm about them representing us,” the Carolina Reaper told Table Tennis TV.

Behind that golden mask is the face of a man named Kevin Weiker, a Boar’s Head chef that resides in Charlotte, N.C. He’s very protective of his city. He patrols the stands of each Charlotte-based team wearing a different reaper-inspired costume for each one. No two costumes are the same. Not the mask. Not the scythe. Not even the painted Chuck Taylors on his feet. Each costume should embody the colors of the team he’s wearing, because every costume should send a message: any team who opposes the city, no matter what sport it plays, must dance with the Carolina Reaper.

This dance started six years ago, right in the thick of the COVID-19 lockdown. It was the Thursday night before Halloween that year. The Carolina Panthers of the National Football League were about to host the Atlanta Falcons. The state allowed around 5,000 people to attend the first sporting event to invite fans since the lockdown began, and Weiker managed to secure one of those few tickets. His ticket came with a mask mandate, but that didn’t bother Weiker. If anything, that only made him more eager to go. Halloween was just a few short days away … why not get into the spirit a little early?

Weiker found a Grim Reaper costume at a nearby Spirit Halloween, complete with a robe, scythe and mask. He decorated the costume in the Panthers’ blue and black color scheme, and he used imagery and symbolism from Día de los Muertos as his inspiration when designing his mask. By the time he arrived at Bank of America Stadium, he was no longer Kevin Weiker. He became the Carolina Reaper, a persona he named after the pepper grown in Fort Mill, S.C, the moment he saw the robe. 

As the state softened its stadium restrictions, Weiker kept going to Panthers games wearing the costume. He never intended for the Carolina Reaper to be a football mascot. Eventually, he brought the costume to other sporting events in the city, including Charlotte F.C. of Major League Soccer, the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association and the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League.

“I always try to say that I will show up for anybody,” Weiker said. “I will cheer as loudly for them as I would for any other team in town.”

The cheers quickly caught the attention of several other Carolina sports superfans. Weiker sometimes receives messages from those fans, often with requests to attend sporting events that would have been unfamiliar to him otherwise. That’s how he learned of an MLTT in Charlotte. 

“You do it for everyone else,” Weiker said the fan told him. “You need to show up for these guys, too.”

Weiker took that fan’s request in the spring of 2025. That’s when he arrived at the Triangle Table Tennis Club in Raleigh, N.C., to observe the Carolina Gold Rush for the very first time. He didn’t know what to expect, so he arrived by himself and prioritized learning all he could about the sport and MLTT. Nothing should have surprised him. This wasn’t the first team sport he attended, and it wasn’t going to be his last. Table tennis wasn’t like most team sports, though. The one-on-one and two-on-two battles within MLTT’s team dynamic captivated Weiker, and it elevated the ferocity and vigor of each point he saw. 

He wasn’t the only one. Like Weiker, most of the other fans in attendance came without much prior knowledge of the team, sport or league. That didn’t stop the Gold Rush from capturing eyes with every movement of that little white ball onto the table. The only thought that could break their focus was one many hadn’t never considered before: that little white ball could be the next big thing in Carolina sports.

“Everybody kind of had this feeling like, ‘This is something new that we’ve never really done before.’”

Weiker made a point to introduce the Gold Rush to as many people as he could find. It wasn’t too difficult. All he needed to do was show up to games of the other leagues, talk about the Gold Rush to fans and accept their promises to attend the Gold Rush’s next event with him. They’d have to wait a few months until the start of Season 3, but they circled Sept. 19 on their calendars once MLTT released its schedule.

When that day came, the Carolina Reaper arrived at the Charlotte Convention Center. This time, with an army behind him. Checkers fans came. Panthers fans came. Even fans of the Charlotte Chaos, the city’s lacrosse team, showed up in support of the Gold Rush. They all came to the Gold Mine with the same enthusiasm and energy they brought to other venues, and they were eager to put it to good use.

“We kind of brought a culture [and] an enthusiasm that we bring to the other sports that MLTT weekend,” Weiker said. “That helped with getting the crowd as hyped as it was, because we all knew each other.”

The cheers came naturally. Watching last season’s MLTT champions play top-tier table tennis elicited screams and roars without much effort. The smack of the ball captured the fans’ attention. Long rallies hushed the entire stadium. And whenever the Gold Rush scored in those rallies, the fans released their built-up tension by way of loud, energetic howls. Without much buy-in from the team itself, the Gold Rush earned these fans’ genuine support.

So how should they show that support? Silent approval wasn’t going to cut it. The Carolina Reaper encouraged these fans to fill the room with as much noise as possible, which they’ve spent years doing for Charlotte’s other sports teams. So that’s what they did. They invented the “Gold … Rush” chant without much prior thought, other than they’ve chanted similar things for the city’s other teams. They risked frying their vocal cords if it meant the Gold Rush could score another point. The hundreds of people inside those stands morphed into a unified body, one powerful enough to act as the Gold Rush’s seventh team member on their way to an undefeated Season 3 debut weekend. 

All at the guidance of that body’s heart: The Carolina Reaper, initiating several of the team’s chants while holding his scythe and wearing a Gold Rush jersey.

“If any team had this crowd and these fans, [they would] play very good,” said Carolina’s Mohamed Shouman, who won Men’s Player of the Week for that week. “I like it so much.”

The Carolina Reaper was born to empower Charlotte’s sports teams. It accomplishes its goal by empowering fans. And there’s one fan the Reaper has empowered unlike any other: Weiker. When he’s not wearing his costume, Weiker doesn’t make a lot of noise. He doesn’t often start social interactions, instead opting to quietly observe from the stands. 

That all changes once he becomes the Carolina Reaper. That costume contains enough energy and vigor for Weiker to take charge of an entire fanbase. When he screams, they scream. When he cheers, they cheer. When he shouts “GOLD!!!” Everyone around him shouts, “RUSH!!!”

“When I’m in the costume, I definitely am more open to interacting with people,” Weiker said. “That kind of helps me be more interactive as far as being part of a cheering section or being part of the game day experience [goes].”

With that said, Weiker is not the Carolina Reaper. The Carolina Reaper is Weiker. That’s how the city’s other fans see him: not as a mascot, but as a true friend. Weiker has made several friends in leagues all over the city, including superfans of all the teams he supports. A feeling of pride washes over him whenever someone tells him they discovered one of Charlotte’s many under-the-radar sports teams through him.

Those people might come for the Carolina Reaper, but they often stay for the new team they just became a fan of. Some even become fans because of the chants the Carolina Reaper leads. That’s completely intentional. Weiker knows how difficult it can be to fully invest yourself into a sports team. If the Carolina Reaper can be someone’s reason to let themselves loose, to let out a chant or two, and to grow comfortable in the company of hundreds of like-minded fans, then Weiker wields that responsibility with the same iron grip as he holds his scythe.

“You don’t want to be that first person that starts the chant [or] that first person that starts the cheering, because if it falls flat, you kind of feel embarrassed,” Weiker said. “But when you’re in a superfan costume and you have the mask on, people are more likely to get involved with you.”

Many of those fans are coming back to the Charlotte Convention Center on Friday for the Gold Rush’s second homestand of Season 3. The last time they came, they were cheering on a team hoping to build momentum on a recent championship victory. Now, they’re showing up for a team ready to take the East Division and, with any luck, clinch a spot in the postseason.

“We needed support,” Gold Rush coach Alex Yang said in September. “Having people support us, opponents may be a little bit nervous, and our players [have] more confidence.”

The Carolina Reaper will almost certainly be plodding the walkway between the stands and courtside seats. He’s not too hard to find. Just listen to the sound of someone shouting … “GOLD …”

… right after you join the crowd in yelling, “RUSH!!!”

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