Root, Root, Root

I took the girls to a Vanderbilt women’s basketball game back in December. It was, to put it mildly, a bust. I hadn’t thought to get any Vandy gear for the girls or even put them in Vanderbilt’s colors. In fact, one of them ended up wearing the colors of the other team. The game took place during winter break, so with no students around there was no band and no cheerleaders. The mascot wasn’t even there. And to make matters worse, Vanderbilt won by more than 50 points, making the game pretty dull.

The highlight of the evening was the fact that our tickets were good for free tacos at Taco Bell because Vandy scored more than 75 points. Seriously, the free tacos were all the girls talked about the next day.

In spite of the utter lameness of that December game, Hannah said she wanted to go back, so I got tickets for this past Sunday’s game against the University of Alabama. I figured a big state school like Alabama would provide Vandy a bit more competition.

Sidebar: I don’t follow sports. Not women’s basketball, not men’s basketball, not anything. All I know about sports comes from Twitter updates from people who usually tweet about more interesting things but also sometimes tweet about sports. My calculation that “big state school” equals “more competition for Vandy” was about as sophisticated as my sports analysis skills get.

The game on Sunday was indeed closer than that one back in December, but that’s not saying much. Alabama pulled within 12 points I think, but the game was never close enough to be exciting. Hannah, who totally got into rooting for Vanderbilt, said that she wished the game was closer. Clearly, her love for competition outweighed her new-found love for the home team.

As much as Hannah got into watching the game, Lily focused on everything in the arena but the game. She spent a lot of time just reading the scoreboard, which was more engaging than you might think since she’s just learning how to read two-digit numbers. The rest of the time she spent trying to find the Vanderbilt mascot, who kept wandering aimlessly around the stands not doing anything interesting, and pointing out all the Vanderbilt logos she saw that matched the one on the shirt I bought her the day before.

Another sidebar: There were two mascots, a commodore and an eagle. The eagle was actually kind of peppy, but the commodore just walked around making mysterious hand signals. The fact that the commodore costume is an old guy with bulging muscles wearing a basketball uniform and pirate hat didn’t help.

I asked the girls after the game if they wanted to play basketball at the Y. Both said no, but that’s okay. I’m sure they’ll play other sports in the future. Lily is really excited about playing soccer again this spring. Soccer at her age means a bunch of three- and four-year-olds running all over the field following the one girl who’s actually kicking the soccer ball. As I said, I don’t follow sports, but I’m pretty sure this is the cutest sporting event on the planet. I’ll be on the sidelines, cheering her on.

Even if there aren’t any free tacos.

Image: “Tuba Jam,” me, Flickr (CC)