Road Tripping: Maryland - NCAA lacrosse, part 1

After an undefeated season in the Ivy League, Cornell’s men’s lacrosse team managed to lose to Princeton in the semifinal game of the Ivy League playoffs. Cornell still got an unseeded berth in the NCAA tournament, but that meant we would be the away team and have to travel to Maryland. Due to another scheduled event, the band would be making the entire trip in a day. Six hours there, six hours back, all on the day before my math final. Naturally, I signed up to go.

The game was scheduled to begin at 1, so we were supposed to arrive at the stadium at noon, so we planned to leave Ithaca by 5. In the morning. I set a ridiculous number of alarms to make sure I would make it to the band room by 4:45 and packed everything in advance. I have to say, campus is quiet at 4:30 am.

By 5, the bus was loaded and pulling out of the Cornell campus. It was still too dark to see anything, so everyone went (back) to sleep. After a couple hours, the sun finally came up, and a little after that, we stopped for breakfast at a gas station/rest stop. My junior year of high school, the band was taking a trip down to DC by bus, and we discovered the pickle in a bag, which apparently is closely related to peeled hard boiled eggs, because ever since then, I've found these two items at almost every rest stop I've been to. They were there, as usual, sharing a fridge next to the coffee machines. I had oatmeal for breakfast.

Very early morning on the bus

Slightly later morning on the bus . . . when the sun finally came up

More driving, lots of two lane highway and cows and corn fields, and then we arrived in College Park. When we entered the stadium, I have to admit, it was pretty impressive. Byrd Stadium has about double the capacity of Schoellkopf Field, and it’s actually a stadium. But for all the staff workers they had, it still didn't stop them from not knowing we were coming. Next time, we send messenger pigeons and smoke signals ahead of us.

The person we ended up working with, however, seemed to be nice, and we eventually took our seats right behind Cornell’s bench. We could almost understand what the players and coaches were yelling about. Almost.

As usual, it was blindingly bright, but also windy. Fantastic combination. Right at the beginning of the game, Cornell scored two goals, but then things slowed down and the teams went into the half with the score 4-6 in favor of Cornell. We were allowed to play during halftime (sometimes at away games the home team plays ads through the entire break or gives us about seven minutes to try and cram an entire set in . . . Syracuse), including the Alma Mater. As per tradition since sometime before I got to Cornell, the Alma Mater is played at halftime of most sporting events or before the third period of hockey.

The last away game I went to, we went into halftime with a similar score, then lost, and that game wasn't even as big as this one. So we were hopeful, but I wasn't going to get my hopes up too far.

Tune in next time for the exciting finale of the game, as well as six more hours on the band bus.