Well, I am finally getting around to posting about our bowl game. It was a lot of fun, but you could tell it was definitely the first year for it. Hopefully it will continue and get better. On Friday morning Jessica and I boarded the Kanza Bowl Bus at 5:30 am. We both had intentions of sleeping the whole way from Amarillo to Topeka, and that's just what we did. I had stayed up all night so it was very easy for me to just crash once we got on the bus. The only problem was...it was 8 degrees when we left Canyon that morning, and for some reason, it took FOREVER for the floor of the bus to get warm, so everyone rode with their feet propped up off the floor. Once we got to Topeka, we got our hotel room and immediately had to get ready for the banquet that they had that night. It was pretty cheesy on the banquet cheesiness scale. They had some guys that came in and immitated the Blues Brothers for the entertainment. Those guys made Coach Carthel and UNO's head coach get up there and sing and dance with them, and then they made the coaches wives and players moms get up and dance with them. Cindy and I took it as a compliment when our players came up and told us afterwards that they were glad we had more class that the other teams female representatives...lets just say that their dancing was a little suspect for being moms and wives in a very public setting. We also were a little distracted during dinner b/c our volleyball girls were playing in the national semis. Once they won we were able to focus on the dinner a little better. The other thing about the dinner was that they did not hardly feed the guys anything. I was still hungry afterwards, and I eat like a bird compared to the boys. Thankfully one of the boosters had pity on the guys and called and ordered pizzas for them before the banquet was even over.
Saturday morning started bright and early w/ breakfast and then the layering on of clothes. Thankfully it wasn't near as cold as we thought it was going to be. I ended up not even wearing my coat. Granted I had on two thermal shirts under my sweater and kept my vest zipped up the whole time, but still...didn't have to wear a coat!
Here's me and Jessica before the game started. We commented later on how glad we were to be in the sun for the game, because I'm pretty sure we would have frozen had we not been.
All of our boys lined up for the national anthem. They had the Topeka HS band playing and they were actually really entertaining. Their drum corp played on the side lines through most of the first half and we had a lot of fun listening/watching them.
Eugene trying to keep warm between series.
Okay, so this may be the picture of the year for me. We didn't play all that well in the first half and had had several 3 and outs. This was taken after one of those. The guys walked over to the bench after the punt, and Keithon told the coaches he had it and to give the players and minute...and then Keithon proceeded to "motivate" his teammates for about the next 5 minutes. Just a great picture to show what Keithon and his leadership meant for our team this year. He is a great kid and we will miss him SOOOOO much next year.
My honey edumacating his boys!
All the guys after the tropy presentation...the gangs all here one last time.
Billy and his senior linemen w/ the Kanza Bowl trophy. We're gonna miss these guys. They have provided lots of memories for us over the years.
Billy and Eugene
Billy and Keithon. Billy loves this kid. Keithon was one of Billy's kids when Billy was at Ranger JC before he coached at WT, and came to WT w/ Billy, so Keithon is one of those kids that will always hold a special place in Billy's heart.
To be continued...
