ASU Undie Run 2009

How often do your hear the words underwear, and charity in the same sentence? In the case of the Arizona State University’s 2009 Undie Run, you’ll hear it quite a lot. In 2008, Rubin Green a bunch of his friends decided to hold an event on the day before finals declared the Undie Run. At this event, the students were asked to strip down to their undies, and run around campus. Pretty simple right? Until about 5,000 people showed up, and now what are you to do with 5,000 pieces of clothing? What other than to donate it all to charity.

This year, Rubin and his team decided to do it once again on Cinco de Mayo, and this time they joined forces with Arizona Pro DJs to bring the most pre-run dance party experience ever. When Rubin heard about the high-energy show that we put on, he knew it would be a perfect fit, so he asked us to join him, and we jumped on. We knew we needed a huge sound system for this, an awesome performance, and of course, we needed as many people there as possible. No problem. We planned all of the marketing for the event through flyers, and banners placed around the school. We worked closely with the entire Undie Run to make sure everything was set, and day by day, Cinco de Mayo approached.

The day of the event, construction of the concert setup began. Our team worked hard in the 90 degree weather but they knew after it was done, it would be worth it. After a few hours work everything was finally coming together. Our percussionist, Stefan set up his drums, DJ Will set up and did a sound check, and we stood back and looked at what we built, and we knew we were ready.

The clock struck nine ‘o’ clock, and it was time. Sounds of DJ Will and Stefan filled the air and students flooded the the Arizona State Student Recreation Center fields. First it was a few hundred, but as time grew, so did the crowd, before we knew it, we looked up halfway through our set and their were thousands of students rocking out to our music in front of us. The number of people didn’t phase us and we went back to throwing down our set. As time approached the starting point for the run, we did some emcee work to keep the energy up. These included a few A-S-U chants, a couple “put your hands up” and a dozen “clap so hands to the beat”, along with a few of the other tips we have up our sleeves. We began the count down from ten minutes, but then it shortened to 5 minutes, then 1, and before we knew it we were counting down from 10 but then 3, then go. We saw thousands of college students running through the campus in their underwear. It was possibly the most massively epic experience ever. As the students came back, exhausted from their long distance underwear run, we knew we had to go out with a bang. We did a quick 10 minute set to end the night, and then sent them off to celebrate the end of classes for the rest of the night.

The ASU Undie Run 2009 will (and already has) gone down in the history books as one of the wildest nights ever. Arizona Pro DJs was jaw dropped when we were told as many as 10,000 college students came to run around in their underwear that night, which was just short of the team’s goal for 15,000. Rubin and his team invited us back for next year, and all we can say is we cannot wait. We will see you next year!

PS: We made it onto a few major news networks including Fox News. Our video crew is working on putting together a video documentary as well, so we’ll definitely keep you posted for more!