College Park

Last weekend Josh, my brother in-law & a high school friend of ours went to the UMD v. NCSU game in College Park. We all know how it ended but we still had a great time. We parked in the parking deck where we were told we could tailgate. We went to the very top since we didn't see anybody tailgating in the lower areas. We were the ONLY State fans up there! It was a pretty cold day...in the low 40s. It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was also really windy. I think there were bursts up to 30 mph or something like that. Being on the top of the parking deck on a cold, windy day...not so awesome. I honestly thought it was going to be a pretty boring tailgate since there were only 4 of us & there were no other state fans in sight. We were playing ladder toss & somehow I managed to kick a set of balls off the top of the parking deck. Josh and I went down to get it & to find a bathroom.

It was hard to spot them since we have the same colors, but we found some State fans! On the way back from the bathroom we saw a guy with a MD hoodie & a wolf hat on. We talked to him for a bit & found out he was from MD but his daughter was on NC State's swim team & will be graduating in May. We ended up talking to his daughter & the rest of the family on the way back up to the deck. They invited us to come down to their tailgate. I'm SOOOO glad we did. They were all so nice & of course at a tailgate in MD there will be crab dip! DELICIOUS! We added our KFC to the table.

We had such a great time, aside from a very painful loss & possibly the worse call I've ever seen...everybody knows that was NOT a first down. Thanks for nothing Ron Cherry. Anyway, I went into Byrd Stadium expecting the absolute worse of the fans because of some things I've heard. They really weren't bad at all. We sat right behind our players bench about 5 rows up. We had a good mix of State & MD fans around us. Of course they heckled the players but I've definitely heard worse in Carter Finley. We weren't in the student section & I'm sure they were worse but based on our experience, they're not any worse than any other away crowd we've been around.

Here are a few pictures from the day

This is part of our tailgating group.

This lady was Russell's teacher, I forgot from when. She was sitting right behind us. We were sitting beside his uncle too but we didn't get a picture of him.

2 rows of Mustafa's family...they left right after halftime because it was cold. Ridiculous...did you not know it was going to be 40 degrees? I didn't even break out my hand warmers!


We were surprised to see that we're not part of this little graveyard. We were excited about this tombstone though...who cares if it happened before we were thought of. I would also like to note that Dan, on the right, is a UNC convert, we brought him over from the dark side :-)