This morning when I woke up, I thought it was going to be a typical Saturday spent at home with my mama. Our typical Saturday’s at home begin with breakfast and the Pioneer Woman’s cooking show (another fellow ginger!). Then we spend the next few hours sorting clothes and doing mountain piles of laundry. We always have sock parties that consist of laying every single sock on the living floor or my parent’s bed and trying to find its mate. It is loads of fun (not really)!
Then we eat lunch and watch crime shows for hours. Our favorite is Law and Order SVU. I mean Benler (Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler) is the perfect detective duo ever to grace television screens. In the midst of watching Olivia and Elliot interrogate a suspect, I checked my school email to see if my Psychology professor had responded to my email, and I got the surprise of a lifetime. I had received a ticket to watch the greatest college basketball rivalry meet for another epic battle, The University of North Carolina Tar Heels and Duke University Blue Devils. Since I was a little girl, I had always dreamed of watching Roy Williams and Coach K battle it out in the Dean Dome in person. Well, today February 25, 2017, I will get that chance to live out my childhood dream!
The Tar Heels and The Blue Devils rivalry is not your standard college basketball game. Just ten miles separate these schools but only eight miles separate them on a straight stretch of highway 15-501 (known as Tobacco Road). Their rivalry dates back to January 24, 1920, and continues today just as fierce and intense as their first meeting. Two-hundred forty-three meetings later and the battle will continue on March 4, 2017, at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill. Carolina leads the rivalry with 134 wins with Duke only at 109 wins. The last meeting on February 9, 2017, Duke beat the Heels in Cameron Indoor Stadium 86-78 (a loss that was heartbreaking to every Tar Heel fan on campus, the United States and around the world).
Game day between these two basketball giants, fuels competitiveness between families and friends. My family has been Tar Heel fans dating back five generations and I am currently a student at Chapel Hill. My family has watched every rivalry game and will continue for generations in the future.
All I can say is I will be cheering as loud as I can for my Heels in the Dean Dome while wearing my Beat Duke shirt on March 4. One dream is coming true; the next would be for the W to stay in Chapel Hill instead of Durham. In addition, as always It’s A Great Day To Be A Tar Heel! GO HEELS!!
