September 5th, 2021, the beginning of everyone’s favorite week: Mudsock. Senior, Eli Lantz, was on Instagram and saw that our rivals, the Fishers Tigers, created a “barstooltigs” Instagram account in order to create tension with the Royals. He decided to create an account of his own, @barstool_hse, and posted a video of junior and football player, Cole Earlewine, and captioned it “Captain feeling jiggy going into Mudsock week.” That video amassed over 3.9k views and as they say, the rest is history. The Barstool HSE account grew in popularity, especially with the heat from Mudsock week, and currently has over 1,000 followers. Lantz posts various memes on the account, from submissions from students, to even a custom video from LaVar Ball purchased by the family of senior, Mitchell Rittman, that has gained over 5,000 views

Q: How did the Idea for Barstool HSE come about?

While I was on Instagram one day, I had seen a recently created Fishers Barstool page. I thought it would be a fun idea to be able to post funny videos from the school and support our sports teams in a way that no other HSE account do. 

Q: What were students initial reactions, did they know what the account was and were they supportive?

It started out a little slow and once I had made my first post I had followed every single student at HSE that I could think of to grow my fan base. I was very lucky that a lot of people thought my early posts were very funny and they would repost or send my posts to their friends and I was able to grow exponentially within the first month especially during the week of our first Mudsock football game. A lot of people know what Barstool is and I would frequently hear comments about the page during school even before it became public that I was running the account and for a while it was very hard to keep my identity a secret.

Q: You’re a senior, what do you see for the future of Barstool HSE?

I really want to be able to branch my team out as for right now I am the only person that has access to the account. I would really like to build a small team in order to reach more sports and eventually when I graduate I would love to be able to pass the account off to keep the page going for years to come.

Q: Getting your account affiliated with Barstool, how did that work?

Getting my account affiliated was not an easy process. On their website you can apply for brand affiliation and I filled out their lengthy forms in order to be reviewed. I was losing hope but after 2 months of waiting, I had received an email that I was accepted as a brand affiliate.

Q: Do you have any plans for your account once baseball season begins?

I would love to be able to post quality content for the upcoming baseball season and build support for our program in order to get more people to games this spring. I am excited to see what opportunities I get this season to bring the student body together and to give people an insight into our program and players.

Q: You’ve done a giveaway with @vtgindy, do you plan on working with any other Indy small businesses in the future?

As of right now I do not have any plans for collaborations/giveaways but I and very open and would love to support local business and be able to give back to the HSE community through Barstool HSE. I think the collaboration was very beneficial to not only my page but for @Vtgindy as well and I am excited to see what opportunities open for me in the future.

Q: Is it common knowledge that you’re the man behind Barstool HSE, or do you think this interview will come as a shock to most?

While it is public that I run the account I do not believe it is common knowledge. I still frequently have people that come up to me and are excited to ask me questions about it and tell me they had no clue it was me. Wether its in the comments, reposts, DM’s or in person I always greatly appreciate all of the support from the student body of my page and I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to grow HSE Barstool to the size it is now because when I started it, I never thought it would get as big as it is now.