By some miracle I was able to scrounge tickets at the last minute, and convince Andrew that he should postpone his trip to St. George. I was so excited about this game that I went out and bought two new longhorn hats, and even replaced Andrew's ragged old UT shirt. My enthusiasm was a bit clouded however by an experience that happened to us two years ago....
 |
| In the stands! |
My other (and really only other) sports team is the Dallas Mavs. So when we moved out here I secured us cheap seat tickets to watch them play the Jazz. One thing you need to know about Utah is that the only real professional sports team they have is the Jazz. There is no NFL team, no hockey, not even a baseball team. So they go all out, even though let's face it the Jazz isn't exactly #1. Well coming off the 2011 Championship we were decked out in all blue and ready to cheer on Dirk! Thankfully the Mavs were victorious! (I was sweating bullets for a while...) But this only made the Jazz fans furious, and they were not happy to see us cheering on our team. We got several rude comments and things got pretty tense. Even walking to our car after the game I was a little worried by the comments people were making. Thankfully nothing really happened....but it wasn't exactly a fun relaxing game.
I was worried to be sitting in the BYU section decked out in orange. I even tried to look up etiquette for away games....I would link to it, but there wasn't too much out there. Everyone pretty much recommends you be respectful, and keep in mind it's just a game. Anyway as game day approached I decided that I was ready to go out and support my team!
Driving up to the stadium I was happy to see tons of orange shirts! I couldn't believe how many people were decked out in support of Texas! I felt so much better as we finally found a parking place and headed toward the stadium. That's when we noticed ominous dark clouds swirling in the sky. I literally stopped and asked Andrew if Utah got tornadoes. That's when the heavens released a downpour. The rain was so hard it hurt my legs, Andrew was even assaulted by a flying fruit coming off of a tree that split his lip. It was crazy! We took cover under some thick trees. I couldn't help but look down at my white shorts (great choice Lacey) and my soaked cotton hoodie. After about 30 minutes we decided we needed to just make a break for it. The game was starting in a half hour! So we ran through the rain only to see people fleeing the stadium. Did we really just drive 1.5 hours for a cancelled game?!
 |
| Soaked but ready for the game |
They told us if we wanted to wait in the stadium we could, but they were encouraging everyone to return to their cars. Well that was a nice half a mile back in the soaking rain. At this point we were committed to sticking it out. What I noticed as we walked the stadium was the crazy amount of orange. I've hear rumor that Texas was allotted 5,000 tickets to play this game, and I would believe it! It was nice to be with my fellow Texans for a day. :)
Finally the game started back up, and that's about where this story gets worse. Unfortunately it was a slow start...and then after a few touch downs we just lost hold of the game. I believe it was something like 550 rushing yards that we lost, breaking a previous BYU record. Despite the sad performance the thing I noticed most was the hospitality of the BYU fans. It was a bit awkward to cheer against everyone else in the stands...but despite that awkwardness the woman sitting behind us could see how much we were shivering in our soaking we clothes and offer us a blanket and some hand warmers. After we couldn't take it anymore and left with 4 minutes left after the game almost everyone we passed thanked us for coming (they assumed we traveled from Austin) and told us that they hoped we had fun with a pat on the back. And this was not the least bit a way to rub in the loss. I think that if we had to lose, we probably lost to the nicest team possible.
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment