One of the ways we heal from trauma is to find the goodness in the sadness. This is easier to do with the perspective of time.

30 years ago today, Notre Dame swam Florida State in South Bend the day before “the Game of the Century.” For Notre Dame fans, you know the game. FSU’s swim team travelled with the football team, and we housed them in our dorms (can you imagine D1 athletes today staying in the dorm rooms of the opposing team? We did it all the time…)
Pep rallies back then (ha ha - “back then” - I’m old) were in the Joyce Center, they were unscripted, and they were packed. It was “the” place to be on the Friday Night of a football weekend. Especially that football weekend.

True college football (or College GameDay) fans will know that this weekend was the first time ESPN’s College GameDay went on the road. Lee Corso and crew set up in Heritage Hall, just a few steps from the pool, next to the basketball arena. It’s all connected. And after the swim meet, I used the hand dryers in the locker room to blow dry my hair, got dressed, and nervously navigated the back hallways from the pool to the basketball arena, until I ran into the entire football team waiting for the Pep Rally to begin. I stopped and waited with them.

This was 1993, so there was no social media; news wasn’t leaked ahead of time and surprises were surprises. Standing with the football team, there was a lot of chatter among the players about “who the pep rally speaker is going to be?” “Rudy?” “Joe Montana?” “It better be someone awesome, this is a big game.”

OMG I thought (before OMG was a thing). I wanted to shrink into the wall. And then they noticed me: the only girl in a group of (much larger than me) guys.
”It’s just me,” I said, holding a piece of paper with the speech I had written less than an hour before in my coach’s office.
And a player responded, “It IS someone awesome.”

I don’t know who that player was, and if you read this and remember: THANK YOU. As nervous as I was to speak in front of 13,000 people that evening, I was no longer nervous about speaking in front of the team. What a night that was for me. And what a game the next day.

Last year I sent a several VHS tapes to be digitalized. One of them included video of my pep rally speech. Watching it made me smile. The memory of this extraordinary opportunity was healing. The memory is still healing.

If I can figure out how to post it, I will. But remember my husband’s words from last blog: my message is fantastic, but my delivery needs a lot of work.