He went viral during Kick Six. Now Auburn’s ‘Sewing Guy’ is making masks to fight coronavirus
Dana Marquez, associate athletic director of equipment operations at Auburn, has told the story countless times, so much so that the timestamp is ingrained in his memory.
Just under nine minutes remained in the fourth quarter of the 2013 Iron Bowl. 8:53, to be exact. Senior defensive lineman LaDarius Owens jogged off the field, his jersey nearly ripped in two. Marquez proposed the idea of giving Owens another jersey — he’d be back in the game quicker that way.
“He’s like, ‘no, I want to finish in this uniform,’” Marquez said.
The equipment staff always keeps a sewing machine on the sideline. Not for any particular reason, Marquez said, but it was something he’d always traveled with. So, the equipment staff took the torn jersey and began sewing it on the sideline.
A CBS camera caught it all. Sideline analyst Tracy Wolfson also tweeted a photo of the staff in action.
The incident went viral and, as most probably know, Auburn won the game 34-28 on what would soon be dubbed the Kick Six. From that point on, Marquez became the “Sewing Guy,” a nickname that follows him to this day.
“A lot of people know me as that, which is kind of funny,” Marquez said. “Considering I won the Maxwell Award in 2015.”
Now, Auburn’s Sewing Guy spends his days sewing masks to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cutting costs and custom cutting jerseys
Marquez first learned to sew as an assistant football equipment staffer in 2001. Heat-pressed numbers found on today’s football jerseys weren’t a thing back then, so to make scout team jerseys, the staff had to remove numbers from old uniforms and sew them onto practice jerseys.
“One weekend (by boss) showed me the whole process,” Marquez said. “How to thread a machine, what the foot pedal was for, all the different settings on the machine, and I just practiced it from there.”
It was frustrating in the beginning, he said, but once an individual learns the process, it’s fairly self-explanatory.
Over the years, Marquez learned new aspects to sewing and honed the craft. From an equipment staff standpoint, it provides a great advantage. For example, the staff can custom cut a football uniform and fine-tune things like arm hole size. It also saves money and is more efficient in the age of players wanting customized pieces of equipment.
Sewing for a cause
Auburn’s athletics department held a Zoom town hall meeting March 23 to discuss how to best assist the community during the ongoing pandemic. One idea brought up was the possibility of creating masks for the health care workers.
“Does anybody know how to sew?” Auburn Athletic Director Allen Greene asked.
Soon after, Marquez and his staff got to work with the help of Stitch Therapy Auburn, which created a pattern for the masks that made it easy for less-experienced equipment workers to figure it out.
The process is relatively smooth. Cutting the fabric and putting everything together takes around a day. Marquez’s wife, Liz, and daughter, Jordan, help as well.
Marquez estimates the group can sew around 75 masks in one day, once all the pieces are put together. Sewing the ties on the masks takes around one minute, if that. They stitched up mask No. 200 Tuesday.
The masks are delivered mainly to nearby East Alabama Medical Center, but Marquez has received requests from outside Alabama. Twenty-five masks were sent to both UAB, and a clinic in Huntsville.
They’re not the N95 masks needed by doctors and nurses, but they can be worn over the N95 ones to help lengthen the time they can be effective. The masks can also be used by healthy people in the hospital.
The equipment staff has an ozone chamber, which allows it to sanitize the masks before boxing and sending them.
“We’re trying to send them out where we can and to who we can,” Marquez said. “And just keep on making them until, hopefully, this ends sooner rather than later.”
