I fought the attraction of sports whenever I could.
For at least 17 years, I groans each time I entered the living room and a game was on television. I have always turned around and I jog on the floor.
At the age of three, I could not wipe my eyebrows in my face in the stands of Dean E. Smith Center In my Cheerleading Blue Carolina outfit. There is a photo in our dining room to prove it. Pout and everything.
With crossed arms and a turned nose, I stubbornly resisted each time my parents forced me to attend a Red Sox Match in Boston on July 4. It didn’t matter that it was my birthday. Or that I thought baseball was boring. Or that it was as if it was 100 degrees outside. When we visited my father’s family in Vermont, it meant tickets to Fenway Park have already been purchased and a plan was in the process of hatching to trap me there.
Anyway, I couldn’t really escape sports. Not with a father who led to basketball. Not with a family that has three television screens in our basement to watch as many games as possible simultaneously. And certainly not in a university where sports appeared wherever I turned.
I joined the Daily Tar Heel during my first half. My father suggested that I apply for the sports office. I said no. I thought I wanted to be a political journalist and someone who could change the world, so I joined City & State to start. It turns out that I don’t like to cover politics (sorry, Lucy). I burned quickly. I questioned my major journalism and if the DTH was the place for me.
But I couldn’t stop introducing myself to the UNC sporting events. Even when I had to go alone. Then, in 2022, the unthinkable occurred: a male basketball team of the UNEC ouside defeated Duke in the head coach Mike Krzyzewski Last home game, then, in the past four weeks later, officially sent it to the retirement. I was queuing in the pit to get my hands on the special newspapers of the DTH Victory Edition.
I am obsessed with each page and each writing line in the Wendy is in the student union. I couldn’t wipe the smile of my face or get rid of the chills decorating my spine while I consumed each word.
I watched the two games with my parents. For the first, we crowded around a TV in a hotel room. For the next one, we led to New Orleans.