Lake The Posts

Autumn felt like it officially began last weekend with slightly crisper temperature and a certain charge in the air of things happening. I took a trip up the Hudson with two great friends from college to watch Northwestern take on Army.

I'd never been to any type of Academy game. Besides the rare site of seeing nearly 9,000 purple Wildcat fans on the East Coast (and a large organized group participating in Sailgate), the atmosphere of being at West Point was entirely new for me. Cadettes in white, parachute jumpers, and a certain level of respect and reverence all around us.

While we lost and didn't get to 'lake the posts', there's a sense of watching Army play football and realizing that due to service commitments after graduation, they're playing for the love of the game, and were really happy for the win on Saturday.

And you couldn't help but feel happy for them too.

On the way home we spoke to a couple West Point seniors, who were taking a trip to NYC to check out a couple good parties they heard were happening Columbia University (and hoping for slightly better male/female ratio than what they have at school!). One was hoping to go to med school and said he wanted to join an NGO like Greenpeace after his service duty, the other was a history major and thought law school and being a lawyer might be his path. They were bright, thoughtful, respectful, engaging and certainly "best and brightest" and "our future" came to mind when speaking to them.

I couldn't help but whisper a silent prayer for their safe return.

Yesterday, my friend Dennis shared a post on N.U. fan boards written by an Army football fan, underscoring what I thought about the weekend in terms of "class acts":

Your team & fans were total class today.

I've missed only 3 Army home games since 1994. You had the largest turnout I've ever seen for an away team.

I hope you run the table the rest of the season.