Photo by Mic Smith
Melissa Stalvey
Age: 59.
Resides in: Myrtle Beach.
Claim to fame: Owner and caretaker of Maddox II, the live mascot of Coastal Carolina University.
Mistaken identity: Maddox II is not to be confused with Chauncey, the costumed Chanticleer.
Get social: Fans can follow Stalvey and Maddox II on Instagram @ccumaddox.
Animal attraction: The Stalveys also keep two dogs, four cats, two goats, an aquarium, a turkey named Tom, and 40 chickens.
Passing the torch: Maddox, the original live mascot and father of Maddox II, passed away in 2016, on the day CCU won the College World Series in baseball.
It all started during the 2011 college football season when the Kappa Sigma fraternity at Coastal Carolina University hatched a plan: they’d get a live rooster mascot to show off at their tailgate.
The Japanese Shamo they found for sale was just right—a fighting rooster like the Chanticleer, complete with feathers the same shade of teal as the school’s colors. But caring full time for a chicken, it turns out, isn’t exactly what frats do best.
Enter Melissa Stalvey. Her husband’s family had been raising chickens in Myrtle Beach for a generation, and although she’d grown up in Indiana as a Notre Dame fan, she’d come to “bleed teal” in support of her husband’s alma mater. An arrangement was made whereby she would keep Maddox (named after the CCU English professor who picked the school’s mascot in the 1960s), allowing the Kappa Sigs to pick him up on game days.
“But it just got to be too much for them, and we were going to games anyways,” she says. “So, they pretty much just gave us Maddox, and that was history.”
These days, the Stalveys and the current live mascot, Maddox II, attend every home football game and many home basketball and baseball games, where the rooster is always a crowd favorite. During the games, you’ll even see him strutting his stuff on the “Maddox Cam” after big plays.
“He loves the attention,” says Stalvey, who is not officially affiliated with the university but allowed to bring Maddox II to her own end-zone seats near the student section. “It’s like he knows. He’ll raise that head up, he’ll stretch, and he’ll turn his head in the right pose for a picture. He knows it’s game day.”
After Stalvey and her bird have posed for countless fan photos, they head back home, where Maddox III is running around in the backyard and waiting, as it were, in the wings. Even though Maddox II is approaching retirement age, the Stalveys aren’t sure he’s ready to hang up his spurs just yet.