Anyway, Saturday before the meet started, my friend Matt from Japan met me for coffee and we got to chat for a while. He's doing great presenting to People to People about his trip. He's also getting ready to travel with them this summer. I lugged my 500+ picture album with me to share. It's cool to be staying in touch!
Ok, back to the rest of the weekend! Matt's cousin gave us tickets to the Duke vs. Georgia Tech game on Sunday! He goes there but was out of town for a frisbee golf tournament. Off we went! We left Princeton, where Matt's older cousin went, to head to the Philly airport and headed to Durham! After checking into our hotel, we made our way out to the James Joyce, a great little establishment where everyone talked about the game.
Sunday we were so excited we got up, got breakfast to go, and headed right back to campus; we even made it to church! The security guards were really nice, they let us park right in the church driveway, maybe it was the Ohio plates on our rental car.
We walked around campus and took a nice break shopping in the bookstore. We had to get some real Duke gear!
Finally, it was time to head to the game, we just had to find it first! Brad, my head coach at Muhlenberg had told us it might be hard to find because Cameron Indoor looks just like a dorm. Being tourists, without a map, we opted to ask the security guard who had been so nice the first time. Well, he was just as nice, after he finished laughing at us. Who comes to Duke without knowing where the Stadium is? Once we got to the end of the quad, the line of students gave the rest away. We had found it!
We took in all the sights and sounds, the history plaques, and a great view of the game! It was as great as I expected! The kids were jumping like crazy, Duke won, but it was a close and interesting game. No need for a nail biter, but I'm pretty sure the people around us might have really lost it had that been the case! It turns out, unbeknownst to us, that it was Coach K's 700th career victory! After the game ended they roped off the students, but no one left, then the team and Kryyzewski's family walked onto the court with him. He gave a speech about how great everything is about his job, from the athletes to the students, and thanking his family. I was pretty excited by all the fanfare!
Did I mention that Matt must have been enjoying the game too? Yeah, he liked it a lot! Although, he had professed to not like Duke before we went, so I think the afternoon must have won him over. He did wear his new Duke hat all day! (And he has already finished reading Beyond Basketball: Coach K's Keywords for Success, his airport purchase!)
After the game we got directions to Chapel Hill, since it's so close, why not take a look, right? The temperature had dropped too much to walk around but we did some driving around and grabbed some lunch. The UNC Women's team had just played so we couln't help but take the final picture to capture the sentiments of our neighboring lunchers reactions to my shirt! The very southern girls literally gasped at us for attending the Duke game, after their mother mistakenly asked how to get back to the interstate.
We finished the night with drinks and dinner in Durham. My friend, Ryan, who coaches track down there met up with us. He offered that we could come back for a game next year, and with it being such an easy trip, we just might take him up on that! Go Duke! Special thanks to Jeffrey and the Smiths for giving us the tickets!
1 comment:
GO Duke
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