And somehow the time winds down to when this moment is ACTUALLY HERE, when we overpower the announcer as he proclaims our boys — Steph, Thomas, BO-RIS, MPG, and JRich, the heart of the team. I mean. I don’t even know these boys but I love them and their journey is a PART OF US. And so it begins — we keep up with them, we’re WINNING! And things turn over and turn over, and we are killing our voices and yet bringing them to life with never-ending cheers — we are freaking HOLDING OUR OWN AGAINST THE #1 TEAM IN THE COUNTRY. We’re making mistakes but in a way it doesn’t matter — suddenly they’ll miss a shot, somehow we’ll get it back, and we score and we jump up and down and up and down and shriek and yell even if nothing comes out. I keep turning to Joe because I feel like he understands me best in this regard — “Look at this. Look at what the hell we’re doing. Holy crap.” I can’t help the profanities that leave my mouth, I really can’t. Becca and I wrap our arms around each other from the suspense. The D-Block chants, chants, chants. Half ends. Losing by 7. I’m terrified we’re gonna get tired and lose it. But we just go for it. It’s tied or within 1 for the rest. Tyler shoves Andrew and we flip out. Steph makes his free throws. He’s looking at us for a second, as if he’s just taking this all in, and we simply point back at him — what else can we do? IT’S YOU. And when we sing SWEET CAROLINE, OH OH OH we are ONE. I am surrounded by one wonderful Davidsonness. It means so much in these moments it’s hard to describe, and it’s not just because we’re doing so well … we are proud of our community, of our life together. Someone starts “FOUNTAIN WALKER” and it grows louder until he waves at us and we cheer. And then we shriek and yell and scream and jump and pretty much freak out some more. And you know what? Losing by 4 POINTS to the best team in the country is not a DAMN bit of bad. We are walking out of the arena, surrounded by our peers. We are exhausted and undoubtedly disappointed because if we hadn’t made stupid mistakes it would’ve been different. Someone yells and it echoes: “DAV-ID-SON, DAVIDSON, DAV-ID-SON, DAVIDSON!” And soon we are all screaming it as we leave the arena, and that pretty much made my week.
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