Being one of only 6 schools with both the men's and women's basketball teams in the Sweet 16 is pretty exciting! There certainly is a lot of excitement around the department these days which is a nice change. I was lucky enough to travel with the women to Chattanooga for the first and second rounds last week and it was awesome. Normally the marketing staff never gets to travel but we have been having some issues with our cheerleading program over the last few years and they cant be trusted to take care of themselves on trips. Aside from our cheer coach, I am the only other person in the department that's cheer safety certified and knows anything about what they should or should not be doing thus I get to travel. Our regular coach goes with the men and I babysit 12 cheerleaders on the women's trip.... totally worth it! Chattanooga was a nice city, bigger than I expected and our hotel was right downtown so we could walk to restaurants and various sites. The trip was a lot of down time so that was also nice, we left on Thursday for games on Saturday afternoon and Monday night so we had time to do whatever we wanted on the non game days. In addition to beating North Carolina to advance to the Sweet 16, the other highlight of the trip was taking over a restaurant downtown to watch the men beat Washington on Saturday. I felt bad for the families that were in that place because with 30 band kids, 12 cheerleaders plus the staff and some of the players parents we were really loud! It was a really exciting trip with no problems other than the super long security line on our flight back after the game. Usually when we fly charter out of the Purdue airport they trust that we aren't trying to blow each other up and skip all the metal detectors and bag searches but not on this trip. It was pretty quick on the way out but on the way back they had us stop outside of the plane to do all of this after midnight with only 2 people to check about 70 of us. We didn't make it back to town until about 2 am but no one seemed to mind... had we lost I can guarantee that I would not be able to say the same thing.
Although I prefer the weather in Glendale, I am happy to be heading to Oklahoma City on Friday for the women's Sweet 16 match-up against Rutgers. We get to bring guests on the trip this time but Karl has to work so my brother is coming to town today to go with me. Should be fun! I have some pictures from Chattanooga and the men's big ten championship game but I got a new camera and haven't quite played with it enough to get the pictures off. I will get it done soon though! More to come this weekend from the sooner state where we hope to beat the Sooners and get to the Final Four. In the words of our athletics director, Morgan Burke: "Its an exciting time to be a Boilermaker."
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