Three snowmen wave casually to drivers at the corner of McGalliard Road and Tillotson Avenue in front of the Ball State sign. Broken branches make up their bushy mohawks and hair while spray paint and scarves decorate their 6-foot-tall bodies.
After a local radio station, 99.5 WZPL, shared a photo, these snowmen became famous — for standing next to adults wearing bikinis and boxers in the snow.
It all started with a Facebook post and a group of friends from 29 to 42 years old playing in the snow.
Mark McCoy and Mike Davis hatched the plan while buying some food and supplies at the store before McCoy posted on Facebook asking friends to help out. Soon, there were 100 likes.
“I told him, we had to go,” McCoy said. “The people want to build some snowmen.”
In a two-hour marathon of what Davis said included the group sweating under their bundles of clothing, they completed their masterpiece.
“We were trying to make it in before the [GoDaddy] Bowl game,” Davis said. “We wanted to get out to the bowl game in Mobile, Ala., to see what Muncie is doing back at home, but that didn’t happen. So we got it up just after they lost their game, just trying to lighten things up.”
McCoy said location was chosen “because people would see it and know exactly where that is at.”
Casey Clement, who also worked on the project, wanted to give credit to the adults.
“I was actually kind of irritated that they credited it to the students [at Ball State],” Clement said.
The photos were posted and the snowmen became an instant hit among McCoy’s Facebook friends. A city councilman messaged McCoy on Facebook and asked to get a photo with the mayor and all the city councilmen in front of the snowmen.
But then they added bikinis.
Talia Traub, a Ball State alumna, had been taking photos in the snow in summer clothing for the past few years.
“I post every year,” Traub said. “Growing up, we had a friend of the family, that every year her and her husband would get out into the snow in bathing suits and lawn chairs like they were in summer weather. I always loved looking at those pictures growing up.”
Traub invited her friends, Clement and Candace King, to join in the summer in the snow photo with the snowmen with the condition that she would get a ride.
“So she says, ‘Hey, the only people crazy enough to get out in this weather is Mike and Mark in the four-wheel drive — come get us and we’ll take a picture of us with your snowmen in our bikinis,’” McCoy said. “And that’s how that happened.”
The group, along with King’s high school daughter, drove out to the snowmen Monday with McCoy and Davis, keeping fully clothed and warm inside the vehicle.
“We jumped out, took the pictures and then got right back in the car,” King said. “We were only out there for five seconds. It wasn’t long at all.”
Clement added a little more to the mix by joining the bikinis in the snow, shaving an “S” into his chest hair and putting on Superman underwear. He said the bitter wind made his skin tingle and turn red.
McCoy and Traub posted the photos on Facebook, which quickly spread through NASH FM and WZPL to a much larger audience around 7:30 p.m. Monday. By 10 p.m., the photo was viral.
“I figured [the photo] would get passed around between mutual friends and that’d be as far as it’d go,” Clement said. “I was told it got posted on the news in Minnesota.”
The response wasn’t always friendly, though. Clement said some people left comments saying they hoped the participants would get frostbite.
King called her mother, expecting her to think she “was crazy” for taking the photo.
“She said, ‘I remember the blizzard of ’78 and there were all sorts of people running up hills in boots wearing American flags,’” King said. “Nobody saw that back then because there wasn’t as much technology.”
McCoy said Muncie police came by and complimented the group and a shuttle bus driver sat through three lights watching the picture be taken.
“It was just a bunch of cabin fever fun,” King said.
Read More
Ball State’s Jewish Studies Program and its collaborative workshops and classes highlight the WWII atrocities that ignited creativity
By Katherine Hill / 21 hours agoThe program continues to expand and educate as a result of the efforts from director Galit Gertsenzon.
The Muncie Area Career Center has two programs for learning how to teach pre-K
By Hannah Amos / April 21, 2025Current early childhood educators can pursue credentials, while high schoolers learn early childhood education hands-on.
Ball State students host protest over Office of Inclusive Excellence closing
By Linnea Sundquist and Shelby Anderson / April 18, 2025April 18 Ball State Students protest the new changes made by administration.
