Edward Heppner stepped up to the mound, ready to throw the first pitch at Friedman Diamond during the last home game of Northeastern baseball’s 2025 season against North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University May 17, 2025.
However, something was different about this pitcher. Though he was at every home game that season, Heppner was not on the team — he was a member of the DogOut, the student section for Northeastern’s baseball team.
Heppner’s consistent presence and energy at Husky baseball games was noticed by the team, leading the head of baseball operations, Omar Rouhana, to invite him to throw the first pitch.
“[It was a] really amazing experience seeing how much the players appreciated DogOut and seeing how much the coaches [did],” Heppner said. “I kind of didn’t think anything about that at the time.”
Heppner ran the DogOut last year before he graduated in the spring of 2025 with a master’s degree in sports leadership. He took over from Ethan Fasking, a freelance website developer who graduated from Northeastern in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and physics. The idea to start the DogOut sparked the night after Northeastern fell to Boston University in the 2022 men’s hockey Beanpot.
“I was ranting and raving about how fun the baseball games are and how I can’t wait for baseball season to start because we had just lost the Beanpot. We got to talking and eventually that spiraled into ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we had a DogHouse but for baseball?’” Fasking said.
Throughout college, Fasking remained an active member of the DogHouse, Northeastern’s student section for men’s and women’s hockey. Using his DogHouse connections, he was able to gather a group to attend baseball games in Brookline in the spring of 2022.
One of the DogOut’s first members was Owen Welch, who graduated from Northeastern with a physics degree in 2024 and is now pursuing a master’s degree in sports leadership.
“[I] can’t say I had ever been to a Northeastern baseball game until he brought up to us one day going during the summer,” Welch said of Fasking.
Graduating the same year the group was created, Fasking let Heppner take the lead.
“I have to give all the credit [to] everyone who came after me,” Fasking said. “I started it up, [but] really what I created was five to seven people who would come out and watch a couple of games.”
Heppner built the program up from the seeds Fasking planted, hoping to create a larger student fanbase for Husky baseball.
“When you go to the games at Friedman, you’ll see a lot of times it is parents, some young kids who are in the area, a lot of scouts. And I just want to see the student body,” Heppner said. “It’s never going to be like it is for hockey, but I want to see the student body show up for this team in the way that they deserve.”
After a year of growth, Heppner handed leadership over to the group’s current co-leaders, Felix Kreis, a second-year marine biology major, and Angelo Bartolomeo, a fourth-year mechanical engineering major. The two joined the group in the spring of 2025.
“A big thing for me is, for incoming freshmen who are baseball fans, they have a couple of options: you can, of course, go to a Red Sox game. We are lucky to be next to Fenway Park, but that can definitely get pricey,” Kreis said. “But you have this really cool option where you can take the Green Line down a few stops, go to Parsons Field and watch a baseball game for nine innings right behind home plate for free, and you can watch them win.”
The Huskies are coming off of a historic 2025-2026 season: after winning the CAA regular season and tournament, they advanced to the NCAA tournament, losing to Mississippi State University 2-11 May 30 and 2-3 June 1 in the Tallahassee Regional. The team ended last season with a 49-11 record.
The DogOut’s social media presence is one of its key elements, consistently highlighting when and where games take place. The DogOut also posts live game updates and directs followers to broadcasts where they can tune in, like Northeastern’s WRBB Sports and the New England Sports Network, or NESN.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen [the Huskies] lose in person. I went to, I think, 20 games or so last year, and they didn’t lose a single one,” said Kieran Smyser, who works in guest services at the Warrior Ice Arena and has been a part of DogOut for two years.
Smyser, whose mom is a professor at Northeastern, has been an active member of the Northeastern sports community, frequenting hockey games so often that, in 2021, he was invited to join the DogHouse as a non-student and eventually joined the DogOut, too. Smyser will begin pursuing a degree in communications at Northeastern in the summer.
The DogOut’s presence at baseball games does not go unnoticed by the team and its coaches.
“Because the DogOut hasn’t been as active in past years, the team is really excited that they have fans the way that they do right now, and so they gave the DogOut — whoever wanted them — free tickets to the [Louisiana State University, or LSU] games,” said Lindy Nelson, a third-year political science and communications major who joined the DogOut in March 2025.
Five members of the DogOut followed the team to Baton Rouge, La., where it played Grambling State University Feb. 27 and March 1 and LSU Feb. 28 and March 2. The Huskies beat the Gramblers 4-1 and 10-0, lost to LSU 3-1 and then beat the current No. 2 ranked team 13-10.
“[It’s] just awesome. We’re 1,400 miles away from Boston, and you’ve got people coming down to watch us play, which is pretty sweet,” said sophomore catcher Cooper Tarantino.
The team appreciates the DogOut’s support and continued attendance at games.
“[It has] been really nice to watch the work that Edward and now Angelo put into [the DogOut] get rewarded with almost immediate appreciation from the team itself,” Nelson said.
Aside from hockey, Northeastern athletics is not necessarily known for its lively student sections, but the DogOut is making efforts to change that.
“I would love for us to have a reputation at some point for being a school in New England that fans show up to, fans are loud at and, in some way, build a reputation that if you go to Northeastern, it’s going to be somewhere you have an atmosphere and you’re not just playing in front of your parents and scouts, you’re playing in front of a fan base,” Heppner said.
The Huskies are playing the University of Connecticut at home March 31 at 2:30 p.m. before taking on Monmouth University for a conference series April 2 to 4.
“If you’re interested in coming, if you love baseball, if you want to continue to meet people, if you want to continue to show your support for Northeastern athletics, then I think that Northeastern DogOut is a good place for you to show that,” Bartolomeo said.
