New Mountaineer and, um, Internet sensation Rebecca Durst did lead the team out of the tunnel for Saturday’s Gold-Blue Game, but at least a few observers thought she went toward the wrong sideline before slightly adjusting her course and veering back toward the home sideline without much panic. Grace under fire, right?

There was nothing embarrassing about her debut, which had to upset some people, but pleased many others.

Senior Industrial Engineering major and Facebook group member, Brian Combs, said that the Mountaineer mascot is a male position.

He pointed out that all of the emblems portray a male Mountaineer and that it’s traditionally been a male.

Combs said although he was initially upset, he has since warmed to the idea.

“She did the push-ups and everything (at the Gold-Blue Spring Game), and I was impressed,” Combs said.

Well, she didn’t do all her push-ups … and I’m certainly not going to hold that against her. She did them after the first three scores (7 + 14 + 21 = 42), but I didn’t notice any after the final three scores. No big deal, I say. More importantly, she did all the ceremonial duties and stuck around way after the game for pictures and autographs and even politely warned fans outside the Puskar Center when she was about to fire her rifle.

And yet she can’t win people over.

The Facebook group “WVU students against beardless mountaineers” has gained more than 1,800 members, and new groups such as “If Rebecca Durst can grow and maintain a full beard, I’ll fully support her” and “Screw you Rebecca Durst” currently have between 20 and 40 members.

“I just think that other schools will make fun of us for having a girl mascot,” said Todd Gutta, a sophomore pre-political science major and member of one of the Facebook groups.

But other schools will look past dimwittedclose-minded students? Say, if a college sophomore is 19 years old, maybe 20, that means said sophomore was 0 or 1 in 1990, which was when Natalie Tennant did her thing. Presumably, the memories of her year in the leather suit can’t be too vivid, right?

“Last time we had a girl, it didn’t go well,” Baldy said.

When Natalie Tennant was Mountaineer, she was booed and chided for her sex.

Now, she is West Virginia’s Secretary of the State.

Yeah, that didn’t go well at all.