When I was in fourth grade, my elementary school was having coin wars in the theme of the Super Bowl. Essentially, you put coins in to the jar with the theme who you thought would win that year. Growing up as a first generation American in a household with little to no American influences, the only exposure to football I had was when the sports anchor on my local news program would talk about the Redskins game and use words completely foreign to me and looking at an abnormally bright green rectangle on the screen. I guessed the Patriots that year. As it turns out, they won. I went on a streak for about six years after that where I guessed the winning team correctly.
In high school, football was a big deal. We made it to states one year and were very close another year. I didn’t really understand football, but my grandmother did. She grew up in Pittsburgh, so she’s naturally obsessed with the Steelers. She’s the type of grandmother to bake you cookies and make floral arrangements, but turn around on game day and shout louder than the rest of us at the television. She explained to me the fundamentals of the game, that there was an offense team and a defense team and they switched after every down. She explained what the yellow lines on the screen meant and that they weren’t there in real life. I kind of understood it, and went to football games trying to pay attention and I definitely knew what a touchdown was, but beyond that, I was clueless. In my junior year of high school, I got a little more into it and picked the team I would root for, and I picked the San Francisco 49ers and I can’t remember the reason. I used their history as the theme for my 11th grade English portfolio and how their development in the NFC mirrored my development as a writer.
Then I came to college.
Football is such an important part of southern life and especially Virginia Tech that it’s almost impossible to separate the two. It’s been said that there are 4 seasons in the south: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Football. Hokie football is a way of life that I very quickly grew accustomed to. My sophomore year, I lived with the probably second most football-savvy girl in America (only after Jen Welter). She really explained the particulars to me, about the pocket, different plays, etc.
And then we come to the apex, the reason for the title of this post, the 2015 Virginia Tech homecoming game against Duke University.
The Hokies hadn’t been playing at their best all season, though they were surely trying, and this game looked as if it might end like most of the others, in a big fat L. And then in the 4th quarter, we tied, and the clock ran out. Overtime. We kept tying, overtime after overtime. We went into quadruple overtime. We didn’t make the conversion, then they got the touchdown and made theirs. Game over.
The amount of stress that I had been under, linking arms with everyone around me, alternating between screaming my lungs out at their offense and when we got a touchdown, and being dead silent as our offense was on the field, was intense. They made the conversion and I was so overcome with emotion that I started sobbing.
Given my long history with football, I never thought I would be the type of person to cry at a football game, but what’s life without new experiences?
