Archives for September 2018

My best friend and very first roommate, Pia, goes to Notre Dame. Yes … Notre Dame as in the Notre Dame that just narrowly beat the Dores two weekends ago. 

Now, I like watching football, that’s true. But this game was different. Unable to make it to South Bend, I marched myself straight from VOB rehearsal in Towers, all the way back to the Commons Center to watch the game. I was exhausted, and yet I was practically running to get in front of the TV for kickoff.

As the game played out, I could tell my excitement was far beyond my normal level. As the Irish crept up to 10 points in the first quarter, my stomach started to ache … I was scared. We were all scared. Vandy had been put on “upset alert” by ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, and it was hard to ignore … I wanted to win. 

But 10 points? That felt like nothing from the eighth best program in the country.

Fast forward only a few minutes, and a 13 point deficit at half time had me worried. I took a power nap on a Commons couch, walked the 10 feet to Munchie, and got ready for the second-half push. But why was I so invested in this particular game?

As the third quarter crept on and on, I was terrified. Our Commodores just were not gaining the advantages we needed. Holding the Irish down? Yes. Scoring? No … Or so we thought … With 11 seconds left in the third quarter, Ke’Shawn Vaughn pulled the Dores to 16-10 with a 3-yard touchdown. There was potential here. This game was actually winnable.

But, quickly, the Irish responded. 22-10 early in the fourth. Then Vandy scored another to get us to only 22-17. At that moment, an entirely new feeling rushed over my body … something I had never quite felt before. It happened with the sudden realization that the Commodores could seriously beat Notre Dame. BEAT NOTRE DAME? That was huge.

With only minutes left, QB Kyle Shurmur threw a pass to wide receiver #16 Kalija Lipscomb. What had potential to become a game-winning touchdown was deemed incomplete as an ND safety fell on our #16. With only slightly over a minute left, the game against the Irish was decided.

I’m not going to lie, I was disappointed. I realized why this particular game felt so important to me … It was personal. My best friend was sitting at a Notre Dame tailgate screaming about their victory against Vanderbilt … And I was in the Commons Center, gutted. 

But the Irish win was not Alabama’s blowout last year. We held ND down. We gave them a big fight. So why did we fall short? Was it just the Luck of the Irish? Or more than that? I honestly couldn’t think of an answer until this past weekend when I ditched my spot on the Commons couch for a spot in the stadium stands.

As I walked in to the stadium, my jaw dropped. NO ONE was there. I mean, in the grand scheme of our undergraduate student body of ~7000 people, we were probably at a whopping 1/32nd of that. Maybe 200 people at kickoff, probably only 70 by the 2nd half.

So, again, why did we fall short? Well, probably because of one word: faith. How did we expect the Dores to pull out a win against the top-10 ND when we didn’t trust them? And, once again, how could we expect a win against South Carolina if the stands were empty?

People say that they want a football team that can win in the SEC. But it seems like an unfair expectation if no one shows up to support our team so that they can pull those wins out …

It’s sort of a self-perpetuating cycle … We lose against ND, so no one shows up to South Caro. But wasn’t part of the reason we lost against the Irish probably because the Commodore fan base didn’t trust our Dores enough? And then wasn’t part of the reason we lost against SC probably because their fan base easily outnumbered ours (in our stadium)??

This all took me back to Pia. I wanted to beat Notre Dame even more than any other team because it was personal. So, when Coach Derek Mason states that “our [football] culture has got to grow up,” how do we do that?

Well, we do exactly this: we have to make it personal. And I think this is exactly what Coach Mason called for in his recent statement that, “It’s everybody in this city. Let’s start with the student body … you need to come out and support this team because it’s you. You’re Vanderbilt and they’re Vanderbilt.” 

If we want an SEC-winning team, it has to start from us … from the ground up. We have to make it personal … because it IS personal … it’s OUR team. OUR Vanderbilt.

So this weekend? Make it personal. Bring your family or friends who come for Family Weekend. And when Florida comes on Oct 13? Make it personal. Head out to Dudley Field, and stay!! … It’ll be worth it.

Go Dores.

Anchor Down,

Brooke

Sunday afternoon, I decided I needed to change my sheets. It wasn’t for any particularly “major” reason, only because I have this really weird habit: I have to shower before bed. On Saturday, I came back to my room far too tired to shower, thus getting straight into bed, and becoming slightly abhorred in the morning when I realized what I’d done. Dramatic?  Yes. But I changed my sheets anyway.

As I went to do so, I first put on my comforter the wrong way. How did I know? Well, I thought to myself, “The tag has to go in the bottom left corner.” As this thought popped into my mind, and I completed (in my very precise way) making my bed, I thought of one person: Monica Geller.

Now, I spent my summer as I think all people should … rewatching “Friends.” So my comforter immediately reminded me of Monica trying to explain to Richard how the bed should correctly be made. (PS: If you haven’t watched Friends by now, get on it. And spoilers no longer apply because this is textbook stuff.)

Example #1 — 

But, besides the comforter scene, I began thinking I am more similar to Monica than not. I definitely have my Rachel moments, and even some Phoebe moments, too. But as I sat to examine my personal tendencies, the “Monica in me” started appearing more and more.

How? Well, for starters, there’s the organizing trait that is central to Monica. As I began to break this down, I remembered two extremely clear examples:

Ex #2 — At Peddie (my HS), my co-president and I were in charge of running Student Council. Over the summer, I made the new leaders a binder full of absolutely everything we did last year. I mean, it was immaculate. Every speech, alumni letter, spreadsheet, supplies list, meeting plan, and every prom document. All color coded, all with notes at the beginning of each chapter, and of course with a cross-referenced Table of Contents. Realizing this, I remembered two scenes: the one (haha) where Monica organizes all of her pictures, and the one with the wedding book. Comparatively … mine vs. hers:

Ex #3 — The second example made me laugh out loud. I was starting to get scared… See for yourself:

After the binder, and the label maker, I couldn’t stop drawing the connections.

Ex #4 — I was reminded of an event at Peddie called “Head’s Day,” which is essentially like a field day. A ton of games, four teams, and big competition. Prior to Head’s Day, my best friend Ellen and I had discovered during a dorm activity one night that we were incredibly good at playing the game “Head’s Up.” And, since I was on Student Council, I had this game added to the roster for Head’s Day … specifically having it added thinking Ellen and I would win …

When it came time to play, we were not doing as well as usual. With only a few seconds left for me to guess the last word, Ellen said “you eat with it!!” Naturally, I began with “fork,” then “knife,” and because she couldn’t explain that it was round, or you ate soup with it, or anything remotely helpful, we lost the word, and ultimately the game.

While this whole process occurred, one of the school photographers took this (incredibly unflattering) photo of me.

This reason I thought about this game, though, was because of the time when Monica and Rachel bet Joey and Chandler that they knew Joey and Chandler better than Joey and Chandler knew them. (That was confusing, sorry. Watch the episode 4.12 …)  Ross writes questions, and they play them like trivia. Ultimately, Monica and Rachel lose the game, and their apartment. But the similarities in the photos are shocking:

Ex #5 — This points to another similarity — my tendency to be potentially over-competitive.

For example, during FH preseason at Peddie every year, there was always a scavenger hunt. The first three years, I’d done some crazy things to try to win: put on 25 t-shirts, showered with clothes on, etc. But Senior year? I was in it to win it. I had ziplock bags ready to place 30 individual turf pieces in, I ate a gogo-squeeze in 4 seconds, and I even asked a Sophomore out on a date. All for the love of the game. (We won, btw. Great victory.)

And while I don’t have any photo evidence this, Monica does. It is a known fact that she’s the competitive friend. Example? The Geller Cup.

PS: How East House needs to be for the Commons Cup ….

Ex #6 — When I thought of this example, it was particularly funny, because it happened once again last night. I walked into my room to see my friend Hannah sitting at my desk. My roommate, however was not in the room. I said, “oh hi … the only person in my room doesn’t actually live here!” I was not bothered by this at all, in fact, it used to happen all the time at Peddie, too. Before I lived with Ellen during Senior year, she was always in my room even when I wasn’t. But the funny part was that this happens quite frequently to Monica, too:

As I thought about the the first five examples, I was almost scared … Sometimes people think Monica is crazy for these things. She’s SO organized, SO precise, SO competitive, and SO loves to be overseeing everything. But then I thought about how all of these things make her who she is, and, make me who I am, too. And, when I thought of the 6th example, it made me realize how much Monica really loves her friends.

Monica is always the hostess, true. But more than that, she lets Rachel move in with her after years of not talking, she eats Rachel’s terrible Thanksgiving “dessert” that actually has meat in it, she doesn’t tell Joey the true meaning of the word “abysmal,” etc, etc. Monica loves her friends hard. And I couldn’t think of any better characteristic than that.

Anchor Down,

Brooke