As a lifelong Georgia fan, I am disposed both by birth and by training to think the worst of Georgia Tech. Consequently, I came away from my visit to Alexander Memorial Coliseum for this afternoon’s basketball game between the Lady Dogs and the Lady Jackets inclined to note, inter alia, that the so-called "Thrillerdome" is surprisingly small, that the roof on the place doesn’t appear to have had a lick of work done on it since the place was built in the 1950s, that the ticket windows are remarkably poorly organized to have been set up by a bunch of engineers, and that the absence of liberal arts majors at the Institute is attested to by the fact that the menu board at one of the concession stands advertises a "souvenier [sic.] mug," but I come not to bury my trip to the City Too Busy to Hate, but to praise it.
My family and I traveled to Georgia Tech’s basketball arena today to witness a contest that was competitive in the first half before getting out of hand in a foul-heavy second half. My seven-year-old son, having learned the most famous abbreviation the Yellow Jackets ever inspired a Georgia man to create when he saw the sign emblazoned with those four special letters while entering Sanford Stadium beside the Uga graves prior to kickoff of the Idaho State game, exhorted the Red and Black ladies: "GATA!" (For the record, when asked for what those initials stood, I told him what Erk Russell told the news media: "Get after their anatomy!")
That we got to see Georgia play Georgia Tech, though, was incidental to our reason for being there (or, at least, as incidental as a sporting event pitting the Bulldogs against the Yellow Jackets can be for someone like me). My son belongs to a group called "Little Dribblers," which is made up of second graders at his school who do synchronized basketball dribbling tricks. Their first public performance of the school year was at halftime of today’s women’s college basketball game.
This video from a year ago shows the same group, although this was before my son joined Little Dribblers, the routine has changed somewhat, and this year’s routine was set to James Brown’s "I Feel Good":
My son, Thomas, was positioned at the end of a row for this afternoon’s performance, which put him directly under one of the baskets on Cremins Court. The boy bristled somewhat at having to high-five Buzz as he left the hardwood, but I reminded him that he was just being sportsmanlike as a visitor to the Yellow Jackets’ arena. Given the final score of the game played by Andy Landers’s Lady Dogs, I’m just glad Thomas’s participation in Little Dribblers ensured that at least one loyal Bulldog could claim to have performed well with a basketball in Alexander Memorial Coliseum on Sunday afternoon.
Go ‘Dawgs!