Ok, as promised, a recap of the first ever SVC football game in over 40 years: we lost.
And now the details:
I picked up Cat and headed down the wonderful Route 22 and then picked up 981. 981 is not at all what I remember. Maybe I’m really thinking 982 in my head, but the road I drove was not at all what I remember driving to pick up Lindsay and Brad when they got in their car accident.
So we got there and drove around awhile looking for Pat. We ended up in a slashed soy-field near Benny, where the Steelers parked this summer. All the tailgaters got there early, so we made a big arc around the perimeter of the lot. Then security came and started parking people in rows. We were actually on the corner of the arc, which was awesome actually, and as it turns out, there was another Aztek next to us!
We started grilling and turned on some music and generally had a great time. We had Popsicles, but I only ended up giving out two (they were melting and we wanted to share, but ended up throwing most of them out anyway). We ended up painting our faces and then heading over to the game, me with the Basilica on my cheek.
We found spots on the hillside (anything besides the stadium is free) and put our blankets down and saw the opening festivities, including a prayer by the Archabbot. The hillside is very steep, and very rocky, so finding a comfortable spot was tough, as was making sure you didn’t roll down into the person in front of you.
The announcer was awful. I think we heard two things from him the entire first quarter. While I’ve actually picked up a lot about football, it would have been nice to learn some names or have some commentary.
The stadium itself is very nice, the students are calling it Chuck Norris Field, in lieu of Chuck Noll Field, and I can understand. Chuck Norris is amazing. At the end of each episode of Walker, it wasn’t the credits that went by, it was a list of everyone he roundhouse kicked that day.
I wandered around a bit and visited, and went over to see Carol Ann at the security booth, which was great. We had some good plays while I was over there (including the first touchdown for us) and hearing all the cheers were great (I’ll take my cowbell next time, it’s around here somewhere).
We ended up losing (to a team for the deaf and hearing-impaired) 39-13, but had a great time. Afterwards we went to Jenn’s room for Aloe and then headed to Buffs for dinner. After a really long wait for food, we headed back to campus for a free concert.
Jan let me into Aurelius to use the bathroom and afterwards I caught the end of Basement, all of Alternate Routes (which I wasn’t impressed by, sorry), and The Clarks. The Clarks had a great show, although Scott messed up a few times (and knew it when he did, hehehe), but it was great. From where I was, things weren’t too bad, but apparently near Cat a few fights broke out, which Security did nothing about. When there was unsafe crowd surfing near me, the only thing the head of Public Safety was worried about was the fact that someone was smoking. As in, he literally saw someone smoking and someone obviously not wanting to be crowd surfing and flailing about and chose to address the smoking.
Afterwards I actually headed up to Benny to return some cups to Brit (via Sean) and gave Jan a ride back to Gerry.
All in all a great day, and I can’t wait to do it again on Homecoming, although this time, I’ll be wearing a hat (sorry Cat, bring you own, hehehe!)
Check out the football pictures and the concert pictures!
