In January 1974, when I was a student at St Mary’s College of Notre Dame, Indiana, I attended the NCAA Basketball game between Notre Dame and UCLA. Toward the end of the game, ND was down by 11 points, with three minutes left to go, and things were looking pretty bleak for the Fighting Irish. No one, certainly not me, would have predicted that in the last three minutes of the game, ND would evoke the magic of a  leprechaun and snap UCLA’s then 88-game winning streak by scoring 12 points, while UCLA scored nothing! It was extremely exciting and, if I was the age that I am today, it would’ve given me a heart attack for sure!

I was screaming my heart out in the stands and couldn’t believe my eyes – especially coming just 20 days after ND had become NCAA football national champions by beating top rated Alabama in the Sugar  Bowl, 21-20, on NYE in New Orleans, which I was very lucky to be able to attend with friends! We joined large groups of fellow ND students and fans, walking around the New Orleans French Quarter and attending the game at Tulane stadium, loudly parodying the Alabama fans’ cheer, our version of which went like this:

“Roll Tide, roll! Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll Tide, roll!”

It was such an exciting time, and that game was a real heart stopper too!

The temperature in New Orleans was 65° at 4 o’clock when we left for the game. But at the game, the weather changed drastically, raining buckets and dropping the temperature about 25°! This was way before Internet, cell phones, and the Weather Channel, so we didn’t see it coming. Amazingly, during that socially transitory time, between June Cleaver and Murphy Brown, my girlfriends and I brought suitcases to the game -YES, actual luggage! – filled with makeup, evening gowns, panty hose and dress shoes, to change for the NYE festivities after the game! Also included was an all-important quart of Southern Comfort! The clothing didn’t offer much comfort during the weather mishap, but the Southern Comfort did! 🤣 Of course, a few days later, between the drastic weather and the innate sleep deprivation we endured, we all got sick as dogs! But I was barely 20 then and oh so resilient! 🤣 So blessed then too, to be able to participate in such memorable and amazing events, back in a relatively terror-free time when bringing luggage to a football stadium was perhaps silly but no trouble at all!

Not long ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of those momentous Sugar Bowl and the UCLA games and my husband Mike and I, along with our longtime ND friends, were talking about it like it was yesterday! It’s funny that, although my husband and I didn’t meet until almost eight years after that, he also was a ND student at the time and attended both of those same events, so they are shared memories for us. That makes it even sweeter today.