Campus Blog: When Football's Infectious

Class, work, meetings, bed. Repeat.

My name is Eudora Linde and I am a college senior. I’m trying to pack as much as I can into my senior year before entering the “real world” while still maintaining my grades, being a positive leader with club involvement, holding a job as a waitress and keeping some sort of social life in my final weeks at Shippensburg University.

There’s something about being at a football game that makes it seem powerful to the extent that it’s almost magical. Everyone, regardless of beliefs, morals, ideas and gender, comes together to cheer on the team that represents them and their spirit.

On Saturday, Shippensburg hosted the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) title game for football. It was the first time we'd made it that far in 28 years. Since my freshman year, I've loved going to our football games, regardless of whether we were having a “good season” (we usually weren’t), but this was something a bit more special.

I tailgated before the game for a while with Student Senate. There are a few standard tailgating groups that usually join us before kickoff, but for Saturday’s game, there were so many people and cars that it was almost like it was our Homecoming football game -- Greek organizations that don’t even exist on campus anymore came back to cheer on our team.

The feel of a college football game is something that can’t be duplicated, and that one has to experience to truly understand. The cheerleaders and band whipped through the stands to get fans louder, and many football players yelled at us from the sidelines to get us to pump the volume up even more. It was like everyone was linked into the same adrenaline rush that the players themselves were experiencing.

Four-and-a-half-hours after kick-off, the play clock finally wound down, awarding Shippensburg the title of PSAC Champions over California University of Pennsylvania. Next week is our “bye” week, but on November 21st, the Shippensburg Raiders will be back at it to appear in an NCAA game for the first time in five years.

Though it will certainly be colder, I hope Shippensburg remembers what inspiration was served during Saturday’s game, and that the community turns out in even larger numbers in two weeks. I don’t know what will happen after that game, but after seeing the faces of the football players after Saturday’s game, I hope that this isn’t the end of our run.

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