Want to know all about Penn athletics from the inside? Penn lacrosse goalie Ted Rawlings is here to give you a look, writing a feature called “Inside Man” that will appear regularly in this blog. To get things started, Ted describes the joys of an early-morning wake-up call, a snowy trip down south and scrimmages against some of the nation’s premier teams:
There’s nothing quite like celebrating the Penn basketball team’s upset win over nationally ranked Cornell with the incessant beep of an alarm clock at 5:45 in the morning. Nothing beats a night on the town like a rushed five-minute shower before even the sun has started its day. And what could be better than a Tastykake coffee cake from Wawa for breakfast?
But this past Saturday, all of that was an appropriate manner to celebrate for myself and 42 other student-athletes. As varsity lacrosse players first and basketball fans second, we were more excited to scrimmage at Charlottesville against Virginia (ranked third in the nation) and Georgetown (13th in the nation) than to throw back drinks in tribute to the “Upset of the Season” in college basketball.
And if that didn’t already have our juices flowing, the 9:30 a.m. Burger King French toast sticks or Arby’s roast beef sandwich may have helped – at least to get something moving. If all else failed, there was the 10 a.m. bus screening of Law Abiding Citizen (three days before its scheduled DVD release date) – for anyone who could manage to keep his eyes open.
For those playing in the competitions, obviously game responsibilities kept their minds preoccupied. But for players like me who would be watching from the sideline – well, I was equally enthusiastic for some warm weather, or at least the sight of green grass. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm went unfulfilled. Snow banks lined the turf fields of Virginia’s campus and strong winds flew into our faces as we played five sessions between the two contests. The sun-baked Virginia I hoped I was visiting had an all-too-familiar Philadelphia feel.
The strong performance I hoped for, though, was the one fulfillment of the trip as we beat Georgetown, 5-3, in three quarters before barely losing to UVA, 4-3, in two quarters. Above all else, that’s what made that 5:45 a.m. alarm clock buzz – which for me was actually a Bruce Springsteen song that I had since forgotten about – worth it.
It probably also explains why the Jimmy John’s bacon and turkey hoagie tasted so delicious and why the window sufficed as a suitable pillow on the five-hour journey home.
