IU Basketball in PA

For most of my time in graduate school I had season tickets for IU men's basketball. After we got married, Billie was also able to have season tickets for our last year in Bloomington. Since moving to Pennsylvania, though, we've had to settle for watching games on TV. On Sunday, January 8th we were able to go to a game in person because IU was playing at Penn State. We decided to go on Saturday to spend some time in State College and avoid driving five hours in one day just to see a basketball game. Here are some pictures from our trip:

We could see the football stadium from our hotel room window

Joe Paterno's house

Ready for the game (we'll pretend this picture wasn't taken when we stopped to eat on the way home)

Bryce Jordan Center

Pre-game warm ups

A rabid dog was on hand to scare unsuspecting children

The pre-game huddle

Tom Crean, looking relaxed, as usual

Ready for the tip-off

...and then the game happened...

Final score: Penn State 82, Indiana 88 - it was nice that they won but if they could have won more decisively the game would have been less stressful

Shaking hands after the game

Local Sports: The Reading Royals

On March 19 (long before we went to see the Reading Phillies play), Billie took me to a Reading Royals hockey game for my birthday. This post also marks the end of our current backlog, which means that we can start posting about more recent events (until, of course, we get behind again!).

The Reading Royals logo - they have been playing in Reading for 10 years.

Billie always makes fun of how low hockey scores typically are. She picked the right night to go to a game!

The game had a lot of penalties that led to a lot of goals. At one point, things got pretty heated between the teams, with players and coaches yelling at each other and at the officials. A player for the visiting team nearly got into a fight with one of the referees. That player and another were ejected over the course of the game.

Between periods, they let a ton of kids out onto the ice. With that many players, scoring a goal would be nearly impossible. The fact that some of the kids could barely skate didn't help much, either.

The team's mascot, Slapshot, also made an appearance between periods, when he drove out onto the ice in this little truck before throwing t-shirts to people (sadly, not us).

The final score was 9-2. We had a good time despite Billie's claimed dislike of hockey, though I'm not sure how a 1-0 game would have gone over.

Local Sports: The Reading Phillies

One of the perks of living in a more populated area is the presence of minor league sports teams. Last summer we intended to go to a Reading Phillies (or R-Phils, the minor-league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies) game but by the time we were able to focus on anything other than getting the house ready to live in it was too hot for us to want to spend an evening outside in the sun. This year, when Billie was able to get free tickets to a game on June 8th we took advantage of the opportunity. Below are some pictures, many of which center on the stranger things we saw. Of course, since neither of us watch baseball, these things could be commonplace.

This was the view from our seats. Believe it or not, I took this picture so that is not the back of my head.

Maybe we would have been more willing to go to a game in last year's July heat if we had known that some of the seats have access to a pool where you can watch the game.

This man ran around in this ostrich rider costume and threw hot dogs to people. That's logical.

Here is another view of the ostrich-riding hot dog vendor on the score board
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Later in the game, the tooth fairy and her young assistant came out to clean the bases with their giant toothbrushes. I guess you can't blame somebody for picking up an extra job these days.

This train shot t-shirts out of a cannon. Thankfully, it was not restricted to train tracks. Otherwise its cannon would not be of much use in a war.

No game is complete without a fight! We have no idea what caused it.

After an early lead, Reading lost, 7-6. Maybe it was because they were intimidated by the fight. Maybe it was because they were not the better team. Maybe it was because their uniforms are ugly. Whatever the case, we had a good time other than the fly ball that came our way and is best forgotten.