Steelers Fans for Life

It’s hard enough not living in the home town of your favorite sports team.  Even harder than that, is living in the town of the ARCH RIVAL of your favorite sports team. 

One way that I think we as a family have connected and stayed connected with our Steelers roots, is by making the trek to training camp as often as possible.  We missed the last two years, but we went often enough over the past 10 years that the big 3 all remember going and talk about going and consider it a tradition.

This year we were ALL itching to go back. 

I had been wanting to go to the Friday Night Lights practice and this year we were able to make that work.  This practice is held a high school near their training camp, on, you guessed it, Friday Night.  We met my parents there.  We got there early enough for the kids to play some games and even get their faces decorated.  We also tailgated out of the back of my parents van before heading into the stadium.

 

Then we stood in line for quite awhile to wait for the chance of autographs.  We learned some things from this process that we would do different next year… but all 3 of the big kids were happy to walk away with a few autographs and big huge smiles on their faces.

My favorite part is how close we get to get to the players.  They are right in front of you… Those same players we watch week after week on the TV are literally feet in front of us. 

After practice we stood by the buses and a few guys even slapped us five as they got onto their bus.  Then we watched them drive off, with fireworks going off behind them and all of us cheering them on as loud as we could.

It was a long day… we drove there and back in one day…. We left our house at 10 am and pulled into our driveway at 2:30am.   The next morning, I walked out into the hall and saw my 10 year old sitting there staring at his autographs… a little while later our 4 year came into my room still wearing the “Steelers beads” he had gotten the night before and he recounted all the fun things we did with the Steelers… then my 8 year old walked in and said in complete seriousness, “So Mom, do we know yet if Palamalu made the team?”  (We had told the kids that training camp is when the players do their best to show their coaches they want to be on the team.  We stressed that training camp is when we find out who will be on the team).  I loved her innocence, as she asked if her favorite player made the team.  And I loved the smile of relief when I told her, “Yea, Palamalu made the team.”   It was that next morning, listening to the kids talk about the day and “their players” and making plans for where they’d stand next year for autographs, it was then that I knew… it was worth every mile and the late, late drive home… because these are the memories, these are the connections, that make the Steelers more than their parents and grandparents team, these are the connections that make them their team too.  And I think because we live in Baltimore, we all appreciate every moment in Steelers Country all the more.