German cousin’s boy played for Duke. I was there for the Pitt @ Duke soccer game. I told Pitt that I wasn’t going to the football game that weekend (I work in the radio booth for football) and that I was going to see Pitt play Duke. His little brother is the one who plays for St. Louis and the reason I might come down to Houston the end of June when Mikey plays at Houston.
Halfway down on the ride the boy calls and says, “It’s Senior Night. Did you bring your Duke Soccer hat? Will you walk with me? But you can’t wear your Pitt stuff.” To which I replied, “no, I’m coming down for the PITT at Duke game. If you want me to walk you have to buy me a new hat”.
Which he did. So, in the stands before the game I took off all my Pitt gear and got the new hat and walked on to the field. All of Pete’s roomies were teammates, one, Pete Stroud, plays for New York RedBulls and they all knew me and knew I am a Pitt grad. So they were all giving me the business. Even the coach commented to me “thanks for coming, etc” and I replied, “this is tough”, he said, “yeah, Senior Night is tough”, I replied, “no, I’m a Pitt grad”. And we had a good laugh.
They had a cookout for the team after the game, which ended 1-1, with Duke of course benefitting from a no-call on a handball in front of goal. After the game, after giving the Pitt team some high fives and good wishes, I went to the Washington Duke Inn which is across the street from the fields and changed into an Auburn sweatshirt which I figured was pretty non-offensive.
As I lined up for some food a Duke Mother came to me and said, “I’m glad to see you changed into a different shirt”. I replied, “ma’am, this is not my school. And something tells me this is NOT your school. I will take ribbing from the boys, but not from a parent and I don’t apologize for being loyal to my school.” To which she walked away. Fuck her.
I do enjoy going down there for games. Mostly I go when we play them in football. The Washington Duke Inn is extremely nice. Has a very nice golf course as well. I don’t root for Duke, unless they would be playing Notre Dame, PSU or WVU. Otherwise, fuck them.