Three notes, that’s all it takes.

When the Northeastern pep band starts to play “Stacy’s Mom,” Husky fans immediately recognize the unofficial theme song of the hockey team and roar—with raise-the-roof intensity. 

“That’s easily the loudest it gets in any arena,” says Gracie Rosenbaum, pep band president and flute player. “They will absolutely be jumping out of their seats if they’re not standing already. But it’s having that immediate rush of approval from the crowd as you’re playing, three notes and they already are recognizing what’s happening is so cool.”

“Stacy’s Mom” is a rallying cry for the fans, an anthem they’re ready to belt out. Played late in the game when the Huskies are ahead or have just tied the score, “Stacy’s Mom” fires up the DogHouse, the rowdy student section in Matthews Arena—or in the case of Monday’s Beanpot men’s final, TD Garden.

Released in 2003 by Fountains of Wayne, “Stacy’s Mom” reached No. 21 on the Billboard 100 and was the band’s highest charting hit in the U.S. It was certified gold as the single sold more than 500,000 copies and it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals.

Wisconsin football plays “Jump Around” by House of Pain between the third and fourth quarter of every home game, and Camp Randall Stadium shakes as the fans, well, jump around. The Virginia Tech football team runs out of the tunnel at the start of home games to “Enter Sandman,” by Metallica. The Boston Red Sox play “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond before the eighth inning. The New York Yankees play Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” after every win.    

And “Stacy’s Mom” has become synonymous with Northeastern hockey.

But how and when did this 20-year-old song come to represent the team.

It starts with Justin Harriman, a 2002 graduate who founded the DogHouse 25 years ago. The same Justin Harriman who won the first Super Fan award in the 2001-’02 hockey season.

Harriman was sitting in Section 41 with alumni and former DogHouse members, including Pierson Van Raalte (Class of 2004) and Doug Thivierge, (Class of 2003),  during a hockey game in the 2011-’12 season, according to Harriman.  

Harriman heard the band finish playing a song as the game started up after a break in the action and asked one of his friends: “What song was that?” His friend said he thought it was “Stacy’s Mom.” So Harriman kept shouting “Stacy’s Mom” at the band, but he never heard the song.

Unable to let it go, Harriman continued the request for “Stacy’s Mom” at several games, only to learn the band didn’t have the song on its playlist. At least not yet.

The shouting by Harriman for the song continued, and then a few games later the band played “Stacy’s Mom.” 

“The thing is that that song’s like 20-plus years old, it’s older than most of the kids in the DogHouse,” Harriman says. “So kids have had to go online and look up lyrics and learn the song to be part of singing along at games. And that’s the running joke, that I just yelled ‘Stacy’s Mom’ over and over again throughout the course of a few games and the band decided to learn the song.”

“I love it. It’s such a classic DogHouse tradition that something starts off as an inside joke and ends up being a university tradition,” Harriman says. 

Pep band director Allison Betsold says the first instructions she was given when she took the job in 2016 was to play the song when the hockey team is winning.

“The fans will start to cheer, jump up and down, start dancing, start singing. I love it, especially at games like Beanpot where we have almost triple or quadruple the regular student crowd than we have at Matthews,” Betsold says. “And I just like the wall of cheers that come when they hear those first opening notes, it is electric. You can feel the floor pulsing with when they’re all jumping up and down at the Garden, which is a little scary, but pretty exciting.”

Betsold said the band is instructed to play “Stacy’s Mom” if the team is ahead in the third period, with between 5 and 10 minutes to go, usually at the 6-minute mark when there is a long media timeout. But only if the team is winning. If it’s a blowout and the team is up by several goals, they will go ahead with the song around the 10-minute mark.

When the game is tied, “It’s a game-time decision,” Betsold says. If Northeastern ties it up, they will sometimes play the song to fire up the fans, but not if the opponent ties the game.

“If Northeastern scores the tying goal and we feel like we have the momentum and we want the crowd to be super into it, then sometimes we will play it. And, not even kidding, more often than not we’ll get a go-ahead goal after that. I’m not kidding,” Betsold says.

At the Beanpot championship last year, Northeastern and Boston University were tied, 0-0 in the third period. Betsold said she wanted to play the song but asked the DogHouse what they thought.

“A couple of them said, ‘yeah, we need it, we need it.’ But most of them said, ‘no, don’t wanna jinx it.’ And then we lost that game. So I’m not saying it’s because we didn’t play ‘Stacy’s Mom,’ but,” Betsold says.

The Huskies lost to BU in the Beanpot final last year but avenged the loss in defeating the Terriers in the semifinal match this season. Northeastern takes on Harvard in the Beanpot final Monday night.

Mark Conti is managing editor of Northeastern Global News. Follow him on Twitter @markconti11