Ben, ‘11

December 20, 2008

As the song goes, we are the champions, my friend. For the first time in our school’s history, one of our sports teams has won the national championship. That means we’ve been waiting 178 years for this moment. Our football team completed a miracle season and defeated the Montana Grizzlies 24-7 to claim the Football Championship Series (formerly Division 1 AA) title on Friday night. I was unable to go, but I had several friends make the trek to Chattanooga, Tennessee to watch the game. We had so much school pride and there were viewing parties all across the country with alumni and students.

Our team played an impressive game and dominated from the start. We outrushed them 208 yards to 39 yards. However, it was our defense that won the game. Our defense had seven sacks and two turnovers, thoroughly dismantling the Montana offense for most of the game. At halftime, we led 21-0 after a throwback play to our quarterback as well as another passing touchdown and one rushing touchdown. On ESPN, the announcers were quite impressed, they even called our school “classy” on the whole. If you want highlights, you can catch them here. To watch the end of the game and postgame celebration, check out this video below in which several of my friends can be seen:

So, while I was stuck watching the game on my computer at home in Wisconsin, all Spider fans felt connected somehow. Undoubtedly, all forty-seven states with UR students had fans cheering on the football team. Facebook absolutely exploded all Friday evening and extending into Saturday morning with statuses such as “Cameron is proud to be a Spider. NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!” and “Amanda is SPIDERS!!! NATIONAL CHAMPS BABY!!!”. I have never seen so many capitalized letters in my life as I did last night. And, as I mentioned in my last post, my classmates were the heroes. My Sculpture classmate, the quarterback, played phenomenally and my CORE classmate, the wide receiver, led the team in receiving yards.

This was truly a phenomenal end to a miracle season. We had a rough beginning of the season with a 4-3 start, but we refused to give up and we went on a nine game winning streak. If we had lost just one of these nine games, we wouldn’t have even made the playoffs. The last regular season game, and hence the playoffs, almost got away from us as we had to go to overtime to win. Once in the playoffs, we beat four straight conference champions to claim the title. To even get to this title game, however, we had to have a come-from-behind victory in the final eighteen seconds of the semifinals. What a season. I know that the team worked so hard for this since my classmates tell me of their five hour practices most days of the week. Congratulations to the team and our first year coach (and Spider alumni) Mike London. They definitely deserved it. Let’s see if we can repeat next year. Dynasty anyone?