Posts Tagged "varsity football"

Football Tradition!

Dear Kid,

In the song Tradition! from Fiddler on the Roof someone asks the rabbi if there is a prayer for the Tsar. “Yes,” the rabbi replies, “May the Lord bless and keep the Tsar–far away from us.” (Video provided for your viewing enjoyment–5:55 if you want to skip right to the relevant quote.) That’s sort of how I felt before last night’s football game.
The pundits favored our opponents and unfortunately for us, they were quite correct. It was not a pretty game. On the plus side, Pi kicked her First Ever High School Field Goal, so that is pretty exciting.

I got thinking about football traditions, college football traditions to be more precise. Not surprisingly, there are lots and lots of fabulous football traditions.

There are countless examples (because I didn’t count) of touching a sign or symbol for luck before the game. Or of entering the stadium to smoke, following a cheerleader packed car, or after various mascots. There is, of course, the famous tradition of dotting the “i” in Ohio (three cheers for the sousaphone player! Did you know that there have been guest “i” dotters? Not many, but a few.).

The traditions I like the best are the ones that are a bit unexpected.

Florida State has the Sod Cemetery. Since 1962, the Seminoles have always brought back a piece of turf from their opponent’s field to be buried in the cemetery. The “Sod Games” are any game in which Florida State is considered the underdog, matchups against in-state rival Florida, conference championships, and bowl games.

At every Penn home game, Quakers fans throw toast onto the field after the end of the third quarter. The tradition was started back in the 1970s when alcohol was banned from the stadium. The fans now use it as a way to “toast” the team. Ha.

The “M” above the end zone at the Missouri stadium is made of thousands of whitewashed rocks. Every year before the first Tigers home game, incoming freshmen take part in cleaning the “M”.

Every Monday of a game week, Notre Dame’s football helmets are repainted (and the gold paint includes flecks of real gold—I wonder how much Chipotle you can buy with a gold helmet?).

A newer tradition is Hawaii’s Haka. It was introduced in 2006 and I have no words to describe it. Two videos provided in lieu of words.

See you in a couple of hours! (Yippee!) My first ever college crew regatta–double yippee!

Love, Mom

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8/31/13 Friday Night Lights – Cross Town Showdown | Report on Girl Kicker and More

Pi at first varsity football game Dear Kid,

First time under the lights as a Varsity player and Pi went 5 for 6 (nerves got to her on the first PAT) helping Sycamore to a 41 to 7 victory over Walnut Hills. At one point she went out for a PAT and the student section started chanting her name. That was cool. But not nearly as fun as her coming into the house and dancing around chanting “I started in a Varsity game.”

There was an incident (the school’s terminology) at the game when a railing gave way in the student section. Several kids were injured but my understanding is that none of the injuries were serious. It was very weird to see the entire student section sitting down. After a while they moved most of the students to different areas of the stadium.

As usual, Dad wandered rather than sitting with me during the game (although he spent the entire pregame with me, so that was nice). I ended up sitting with a family that recently moved here from the Netherlands. They had never seen a football game (American football). We had a really nice time together.

The team has their pre-game (and I assume all other) meetings in the team room as the locker room is problematic when there is more than one gender on the team. It’s a small-ish room and Pi was telling us how cool it was when the players all bellow “huuh” and the sound echos around the room.

Only when she said tried to grunt the “huuh” it sounded like a dying duck. Dad tried to teach her how to grunt like a boy properly.

“Huuh!”

“huuuhhhh?”

“Huuh!”

“Uuuuhhhhhhhoooooooooeeee”

“Like you mean it”

“Grrrr”

“Not grrrr. HUUUH!”

“Grruuuuhhhh…”

“No teeth. Just Huuh!”

Pi rolls her lips over her teeth like she has just taken out dentures. “ehhhhhhehhehehee hee hee hee.”

By now we are all laughing. Except Booker who was getting concerned that Something Wasn’t Right.

“Try bringing your arms down like you’re doing the chicken dance. Huuh!”

Flap, flap, flap. “Aaaaaooooooohhhh.”

“No, just once. Huuh.”

“Haaaaaaoooooh.” Then she fell off her chair because she was laughing so hard.

The girl can kick. But she can’t grunt. Yet.

Love, Mom

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