Eastern Experience Leads To Big League Success

When the little salmon mascot “Humpy” waddled his way to winning his first-ever Salmon Run race during the 15^th inning of the Seattle Mariners’ deciding game of the 2025 American League Division series, fans knew they were witnessing something special. Humpy had lost his previous 167 attempts, including one earlier that night, but the creative mind overseeing game entertainment thought weary fans and players could use a boost. The loveable underdog’s unexpected victory secured a permanent spot in Mariners lore when a few minutes later, the reenergized home team went on to score in the bottom of the inning and to move on to the AL Championship Series.

Behind the scenes, in the control room at T-Mobile Park that night, showrunner and EWU alumnus Tyler Thompson also cheered. For him, that pivotal moment in Seattle sports fan history capped a lifetime’s worth of aspirations and hard work. And his road to a dream career in sports entertainment ran directly through Eastern Washington University.

Thompson, ’16, ’18, says while he’s proud to be a Seattle Mariner, he’s equally proud to be an Eastern Eagle. A Spokane Valley native and first-generation college student, Thompson first fell in love with EWU athletics when he attended games as a middle schooler to support his cheerleader sister.

“I became a fan because Eastern was so close to home, and I’ve always found pride in an underdog school that punched way above its weight,” Thompson says. “Choosing to go there for college was a no-brainer for me.”

The Mariners hired Thompson directly out of his graduate degree program in sports administration at EWU. He says the education and experience he gained at Eastern was key in enabling him to hit the ground running in Seattle. He quickly rose through the ranks to become the team’s director of game entertainment and experiential marketing. Along the way, he has won a regional Emmy award and several prestigious Golden Matrix sports entertainment awards. Major League Baseball has also tapped him to help run the show at the All-Star game for the past several summers. A particular “pinch-me” moment came when he wrote and produced the number retirement ceremony last summer for Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki, who was the most famous Mariner during Thompson’s childhood.

“It’s a full-circle moment for me every single day I come to the ballpark,” he says. “I’ll see the sun setting over the Olympic Mountains and be taken back to a scenic shot I watched on Fox Sports Network as a kid and think, ‘This isn’t T.V. anymore, buddy, you get to live and work here and this is your life now.’”

Several of Thompson’s brainchildren for the Mariners have quickly become fan-favorite traditions and even gone viral, including the “hot dogs from heaven” in-game promotion and the Mariners Rally Shoe. The idea for the Salmon Run race was born from Thompson’s time spent as a child fishing in Eastern Washington with his dad. In fact, he had such a passion for conservation he originally wanted to become a wildlife biologist. At Eastern, he was able to take classes in environmental science while earning a degree in business operations to pursue an even greater passion—a career in the sports industry.

Starting in high school, Thompson worked for the Spokane Indians baseball team in the summers and for the Spokane Chiefs hockey team in the winters. He continued those jobs in college while also gaining invaluable applied learning experience as an intern with EWU Athletics. After earning his Bachelor of Business Administration degree in business operations in 2016, he immediately enrolled in the master’s degree in sports administration at Eastern, working as a graduate assistant in marketing and gameday operations. He says Eastern’s smaller size compared to larger D1 sports programs afforded him greater responsibility and hands-on involvement.

Thompson encourages current Eastern students to take advantage of those types of opportunities because they can serve as invaluable stepping stones toward a career in sports. He also cites the greater Spokane area as a wealth of opportunity given its status as a regional sports hub.

“Eastern is a fantastic school and a great community, so embrace being an Eagle and all the opportunities surrounding you there,” Thompson says.

Tim Collins, EWU’s director of athletics, says it’s no accident so many of the university’s graduates go on to successful careers in sports. In addition to several alumni working at the Seattle Mariners, EWU grads also work for professional sports teams such as the Seattle Seahawks and the Everett AquaSox, as well as for college athletics departments such as Texas A&M University and Indiana University.

“One of the great things about a student’s opportunities working in an athletics department like Eastern’s is that in no way are we overstaffed, so there’s plenty of work that students are able to throw themselves into and be immersed in just like a staff member would,” Collins says. “It is the definition of learning by doing.”

Collins says some of the skills students acquire through working in college athletics include learning how to work in team environments and how to take more initiative in solving problems and executing projects.

“At Eastern, you get to be empowered in real initiatives and test them out in real time,” he says. “When students take the skills and experience, just like Tyler did, they’ve been able to acquire and mix in a little grit, they’re going to be able to build incredible portfolios and have immediate impact in their careers and that’s going to get noticed.”