Happy Pac-10 Year!

I spent the recent holiday in southern California. My anticipation was high--both to see the new USC basketball arena and to wreak revenge against the UCLA Bruins.

First stop was the game against USC in the new Galen Center. This is a magnificent building with nearby parking and a classy street-level, indoor concourse—it’s much warmer than ours! The upper concourse was not so grand, and I wondered whether they ran over budget or out of time. (Galen Center did, however, display banners recognizing their past USC basketball and volleyball titles.) This game was mostly exciting because I got to catch up with my former roomer T’Nae Thiel and her Stanford and current San Diego roommate Kelley Suminski. They had driven three hours to get to the game and planned to return home after the game. That’s dedication!

Extracting revenge against UCLA for defeating us in the Pac-10 tournament last spring wasn’t easy. Christy Hedgpeth and Vanessa Nygaard were in attendance at this game. We were comfortably ahead after about 5 minutes into the second half, and we had our chuckle for the day when the UCLA yell leader misspelled “Bruins.” But then our big girls got into foul trouble, and we hit a long scoreless spell. Meanwhile, UCLA’s Noelle Quinn couldn’t miss the basket. The 23-point lead shrank to six. Dave Cortesi glared at me—a well deserved reprimand for my being confident earlier about our forthcoming victory. As a conscientious fan, I know better than to invoke the jinx. But still, I sat quietly confident, keeping score with my Amy Tucker Fan Club ballpoint pen, and we were victorious after all.

I drove to Palm Desert after the LA games to celebrate the holidays with a former FBC member. There I saw The Living Desert’s baby giraffe; too young to recruit, but already very tall!