My First UK Game at Rupp

By Weege

Posted January 26, 2012, 6:00 pm

2 Comments

I was a freshman in high school. I had begged my Dad for years to take me to a UK game at Rupp Arena. The old man is a chain smoker with bad knees, so the idea of climbing a mountain of steps and going two hours without a smoke didn’t really appeal to him. He wasn’t a big basketball fan back then and he didn’t see why anyone would pay that much money and go to all that trouble to go to a game you could just watch on television. Nevertheless, he knew how big of a deal it was to me so when the opportunity arose he offered to take me. He had to be in Frankfort for work early in the morning the day after a UK game so he got some tickets through a friend and planned for us to get a hotel in Lexington and go to the game. So we packed our suitcases and headed off to the game. I could not have been more excited.

The majority of our two hour drive went smoothly other than the cloud of smoke I was forced to breathe, but when we got to Versailles Road the car started making a weird noise and Dad had to pull over. He diagnosed the problem and then informed me that the car wasn’t drivable and even worse, we might have to miss the game! Dad made some calls and to our surprise a tow truck quickly arrived to tow our car. Dad took one look at the tow truck driver and decided he didn’t want to leave our luggage in the car with that guy, so we decided to take it with us to the game. We had never been to Rupp and we were so naïve we thought there would be somewhere we could store our luggage when we got there. Dad made a call and one of his officers picked us up and dropped us off at the front entrance.

So we entered Rupp Arena carrying suitcases (with no wheels). A security guard stopped us and searched our luggage. You should have seen the look on his face when he said, “There’s a gun in here!” as he jumped back about three feet and then looked all around and stared at us like we were criminals. Yes, my Dad had a gun in his luggage and forgot to mention that to anybody. Within seconds there were about a dozen security guards making everyone back up while they fumbled through the rest of our stuff. By the time my Dad told them he was a police officer and showed them his badge all of our clothes including a pair of tighty whiteys were scattered on the floor for all to see. To my surprise, they gave him his gun back and allowed us to proceed.

There was no offer of storing our luggage, so we began trying to figure out where our seats were as we marched on with our bags. The mob of over 23,000 people darted around us in all directions and gave us bewildering looks while time after time we bumped into people with our luggage. As we walked out of the ramp on the upper level all the delusional thoughts I’d been having about sitting comfortably in some cozy seat while my suitcase was beside me quickly vanished, and I realized we were in over our heads. Just as we were about to throw in the towel we found our seats and amazingly they were in the first row of the upper level. We were able to stuff the majority of our bags under our seats and put our feet on the parts that stuck out without blocking off the row. That particular row was the ONLY ROW that would allow us to do that. If we had been in row 2 or any other row we would have been out of luck.

I don’t remember much about the actual game that was played on the floor. I remember being amazed at how loud it was. I remember gazing at all the banners in the rafters. I remember gawking at the cheerleaders and dancers. I remember wondering if maybe someday I would be good enough to play for UK (another delusional thought). I remember thinking the players were like celebrities and thinking how cool it would be a part of the team. I remember chanting C-A-T-S as loud as I could.

I also remember how uncomfortable Dad was in his seat. I remember the look of relief on his face when it was finally time to go and he could finally smoke. But most of all, I remember realizing that he went through all of that trouble for me. I’ve always referred to that experience as our “initiation” into The Big Blue Nation. It’s 21 years later now and I’ve probably gone to a hundred UK games, but I’ll never forget the first one.

Comments

Nick

Posted January 26, 2012, 6:45 pm

What year was Weege's first trip to Rupp? I'm guessing it was back in the day since there's no way anything like that could happen today. Very funny first trip to Rupp.