Upon the completion of Ralphie VI's debut run around Folsom Field on Sept. 3, her Handlers came together to celebrate and congratulate one another.

After Ralphie VI finished her opening laps as the Buffs faced UNC, a new chapter for the Ralphie Handlers and by extension, CU football, had gotten off to a picture perfect start.

Battling through a once-in-a-century pandemic in record time, the Handlers had successfully kicked off the Ralphie VI era.

In November of 2020, a five-month-old buffalo candidate who would later become Ralphie VI was donated to the Handlers program.

In about 10 months, from last November to Sept. 3 of this year, program manager Taylor Stratton, her assistant coach, Colton Behr and the Handlers all managed to turn their juvenile buffalo candidate into Ralphie VI, continuing on CU's beloved live mascot tradition that dates back to 1967.

Stratton and Behr first ensured that she was comfortable around them.

"It started with myself and Taylor, getting her used to hearing voices, being close to people and working up to putting our hands on her, getting her to eat out of our hands, having her used to putting the headstall on her and getting used to being in the trailer," Behr said.

"We’d feed her in the trailer and put her in there at night, to get her used to it and to get her to like the trailer."

Then came time to introduce her to the Handlers themselves, further making sure that she was used to being around people.

After that, the Handlers began the process of simulating the Folsom Field gameday routine and atmosphere — getting Ralphie VI used to traveling in her trailer, as well as introducing her to louder noises.

"When all of that went well, we started running her at the ranch, running her at some horse arenas and running her at Prentup Field to start practicing and that all went well," Behr continued.

"Our Handlers did really well with her. She did fantastic, started learning what we were looking for and learning what her job was."

Looking back through the history of the Handlers program, Ralphies I through V had trained for at least a calendar year before debuting at Folsom Field.

Stratton, working with a challenging set of circumstances foreign to all program managers before her, deserves much credit for guiding the Handlers through a unique situation and ensuring that CU's much-loved tradition was able to begin anew in tandem with the start of the 2021 season.

"I think Taylor did an amazing job preparing for every single variable that could possibly happen on gamedays," senior Handler Savannah Spakes said. "Everything you could imagine, we did and took care of.”

"We did all these little things and Taylor thinking of them — she put so much detail into everything and I think that goes unnoticed because obviously nobody knows all the behind-the-scenes stuff."

While it doubtless was an interesting span of time, looking at the 10-month journey from when the Handlers received an infant buffalo to her formal introduction as Ralphie VI far from tells the whole story of her eventual debut on Sept. 3.

It's worthwhile to look back at Stratton's first few weeks as program manager, which adds further context to the journey the Handlers program embarked on, leading into Ralphie VI's inaugural run.

Late into CU's 2019 season, Ralphie V's retirement was announced. On Feb. 27 of last year, John Graves, who had served as the Handlers' program manager since 2015, announced his departure.

Graves' assistant coach from 2016-2019 was Stratton, a CU grad and former Handler herself, and she was quickly tapped as the new program manager, with plans for her to take the reins completely on April 1, 2020.

If leading the charge on ushering in a new chapter for the Ralphie Handlers program wasn't enough for Stratton to get cracking on as she took over from Graves, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic without question made things even more difficult.

By the time of Stratton's first day on the job, Boulder County was a few weeks removed from seeing its first case of COVID-19.

On March 25, stay-at-home orders in Boulder County were issued.

Just as the pandemic was beginning to considerably alter everyday life for people not only in Boulder but across the United States, the Handlers had identified their first candidate to prospectively become Ralphie VI.

Shortly into Stratton's tenure as program manager, the Handlers settled on a buffalo they hoped in time could become Ralphie VI.

However, from the jump, there were concerns that their first candidate might not be compatible with the requirements of being Ralphie.

“She would have been just around a year old when I took over the program in April of 2020," Stratton said. "At that point, she had seen a few people. John Graves had gotten her through some of his contacts in the bison industry and working with her, she just didn’t really seem to have a very collaborative attitude."

Handler safety is paramount no matter what the situation is — an actual run at Folsom Field, practicing with Ralphie, etc. — and in training a new buffalo, especially one who hadn't become fully acclimated to being around people, the safety of the Handlers was at risk.

What's more, at the end of the day, the Handlers can only work at a pace that the buffalo is comfortable with.

"It’s tricky with bison — they’re very independent animals," Stratton said. "They’re still wild animals and they’re not domestic like cows. The saying in the industry is that you can make a buffalo do anything that a buffalo wants to do. She just wasn’t showing signs that she wanted to work with us."

The COVID-19 pandemic also prevented Stratton from being able to gather her Handlers and introduce them to their Ralphie VI candidate.

With the Handlers getting together primarily via Zoom meetings that spring and summer, critical time was lost in introducing the buffalo to bigger groups of people.

"In her formative months when I took over, we didn’t have the chance to get the team out there with her, so she wasn’t able to be around people until much later that fall," Stratton said.

'"At that point, she was at least a year-and-a-half (old). She’s bigger, she hadn’t been around people and so, when she sees them, of course she’s going to be shocked."

By October of last year, Stratton and Behr were able to assemble the Handlers but by then, the writing was on the wall that things weren't going to work out with their initial Ralphie VI candidate.

"She was a little wilder than what we would have liked and we weren’t able to bring the Handlers to the ranch and get her used to people," Behr said. "I think that went unsuccessfully because we couldn’t get her used to people in time, so she was a little too aggressive."

Within about a month of parting ways with their first candidate, the Handlers had began the early stages of testing out a second buffalo, who would eventually become Ralphie VI.

This one came via a donation by Will Isham, a CU graduate, Class of 1980, and operator of a bison ranch in northwestern Nebraska with his daughter, Drew, who herself graduated from Colorado in 2013.

Having been around the Ishams very early on, the buffalo's introductory sessions with Stratton and Behr went smoothly.

"She was so used to (people) and was very good about it — gentle and relaxed — which was huge," Behr said. "She wasn’t afraid of people, timid or aggressive at all. I think the second time I met her, she let me put my hands on her back and pet her and everything."

"That right there was an indication that this is a very strong candidate to be a Ralphie, with how comfortable she was with us."

Shortly after birth, Ralphie VI was rejected by her mother. The Ishams raised her and enlisted the help of one of their beef cows, as well, to milk her.

Having a cow as an essential foster parent also contributed to a trait that seems to be a big part of Ralphie VI's personality.

"She’s a lot more vocal than any other buffalo I’ve ever been around and I think that was probably because she was raised by a beef cow in part, and so she spent a lot of her formative first few weeks around cows, who are much more vocal than buffalo," Stratton said. "That’s the behavior that she saw and is emulating."

"She’s also just a really nice buffalo. She wants to be around people and has spent her entire life around people, quite literally from the day she was born...She sees people as her herd and her friends, which is something we always look for.”

Behr, a four-year letterman with the Handlers from 2015-2018, assumed assistant coaching duties under Stratton last August.

Checking around the Handlers program, there was ample corroboration that Ralphie VI and Behr have developed a special relationship:

"Her favorite person in the entire world is actually Colton," Stratton said. "She’s obsessed with him. Basically, he shows up and everyone else is chopped liver."

"She enjoys playing soccer with our assistant coach, Colton," junior Handler Kara Morgan said. "He’ll roll balls to her and she hits them with her head. She just has a lot of personality for a buffalo that a lot of people don’t really realize those animals have.”

"She definitely likes to lick us a lot — that is one of her favorite things to do," Spakes said. "Especially Colton, she loves to lick Colton. She’s such a sweetheart — she’ll let me get up in her face and really love on her like a dog."

"She will really let me love all over her and let me scratch her back fur, especially when she does a great job and she knows it. She has a great personality."

In the months leading up to Colorado's season-opener against UNC, the Handlers had made steady progress in training Ralphie VI, yet at the same time, all was quiet in terms of an official announcement indicating that she'd debut in 2021.

The radio silence was strategic on a number of fronts. For starters, Stratton wanted to be 100% sure and then some that their Ralphie-in-training was in fact ready for the bigtime.

As is easy to imagine, Buff Nation began to grow increasingly restless as Sept. 3 approached, and Stratton was often under siege by eager fans wanting a play-by-play on how things were going.

"People would ask me, “What do you think? What do you think? What do you think?’ and I would always respond, ‘I think she’s doing very well," Stratton said. "She’s a great candidate.’ And so, we didn’t actually tell the team or announce her as Ralphie VI until like a week or two weeks before her debut.”

Additionally, given that debuting a new Ralphie is a once-in-a-decade-plus event, Stratton wanted the official release that she'd debut in 2021 to be perfect.

That announcement video came on Wednesday, Sept. 1, with ESPN's Chris Fowler, a Colorado graduate himself, narrating.

From there, as Sept. 3 approached, all that could have been done to get Ralphie VI ready for a big crowd at Folsom Field had been done.

The Handlers had invited the Golden Buffalo Marching Band to a prior practice to offer simulation of the noises she would be hearing when it came time to debut and also enlisted CU's track & field team to run behind her at practice, further building up to the big first run.

But in the end, there was no way to completely copy a gameday atmosphere at Folsom Field.

With Ralphie VI having convinced her coaches and Handlers that she was ready, all eyes drifted towards Friday night, when the Buffs hosted the UNC Bears.

For the upperclassman Handlers that ran with Ralphie VI's predecessor, nicknamed 'Blackout,' they had seen firsthand how the crowd at Folsom Field got her excited and made her want to run with a purpose.

When all was said and done, Ralphie VI proved to feed off the crowd, as well.

“She was excellent and I think exceeded all of our expectations," senior Handler Andy Pike said. "I was talking to some of the other Handlers before and we were optimistic that she’d really just take off. And she did, both runs. We were very happy."

The attendance at Folsom Field on Sept. 3 was 44,153, not quite a sellout crowd but, aside from CU's 2019 home opener against Nebraska, the most the Buffs have had at the first game of the year in Boulder since 2012.

CU's student section showed up in force for the game, in part certainly to see Ralphie VI's debut.

Per Colorado Sports Information, the 11,537 "student swipes" registered for the UNC game was the most ever seen since CU began tracking student attendance in 2006.

Their presence, as well as the "we want Ralphie" chants before the game appeared to have a positive impact on Ralphie VI herself, who went on to embark on two flawless laps of Folsom Field.

"She ran like she’d never ran before to be quite honest," said junior Handler Wes Weber. "I’ve been on quite a few practice runs with her and us Handlers have seen how she is in practice, but then to see the difference with how she was at the game, you could tell she was pumped up just like we were with the crowd. She felt it — she just did amazing."

"The student section is on that initial part of our run before we make our turn and they're really important...She definitely fed off of it, so, it’s huge for future games.”

Since her debut Sept. 3, Ralphie VI made her second-ever run around Folsom Field two weekends later, when the Buffs hosted Minnesota.

This Saturday afternoon will mark game three of her young career, as she'll lead the Buffs onto the gridiron before they kickoff against Southern California.

If anything, the start of the Ralphie VI era represents in part a return to regularity that the COVID-19 pandemic shelved over the last year-and-a-half.

With a few successful runs now under her belt, the Handlers as well as Colorado's fan base are excited to continue to watch her represent the Buffaloes for years to come.

"After such a weird year of no football and no fans last year, there is nothing more normal than packing into Folsom Field and watching a buffalo run," Behr said. "It's so incredible and a great experience.”

"The morning after (Ralphie VI's debut), I sat with her at the ranch and read her all the comments and texts and DMs that we were getting from people, just so she knows how big of a star she is and how much everyone loves her.”

The Ralphie Handlers program is entirely funded by private donations. To support Ralphie V, Ralphie VI and the Handlers themselves, click here.